Say you are a criminal and have managed to phish hundreds of credit card numbers away using email scams and fake online ecommerce sites. How do you test the validity of the accounts?

If you were a pickpocket, you could swipe a stolen credit card at a gas pump and see if it works. But “virtual credit cards” don’t work that way. How do you see if they work? You donate a penny to an online charity or politician.

From Brian Krebs of the WaPo here:

On Nov. 8, Wikimedia saw hundreds of penny donations come in over a very short period of time. In many cases, Wikimedia donors leave messages of support or praise for the organization along with their gift, but all of the fake donations were anonymous and contained no greeting, suggesting their submission may have somehow been automated.

Wikimedia spokesperson Sandra Ordonez said “those one-penny donations, it was costing us more to process them,” she said. “We were actually getting negative money back.”

Wikimedia has now increased the minimum contribution it will accept to one dollar.

So if you notice a penny deducted from your account, panic.

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