active.com = Credit Card Fraud ???

So here is the story.

I have two cards that have fallen victim to credit card fraud in the last month.  This by itself is not "news" as many cards fall victim to this.  For the banks part they have been exceedingly easy to deal with and everything has been straightened out.  Since I like to try to understand the world I went back and tried to figure out how this may have happened.  Interestingly enough one of the cards is a "backup" card that never leaves the house it is used incredibly infrequently, less than 5 transactions per year.  The other is a walk about card and gets used a fair amount for the usual, gas, groceries, entertainment and such.  Both cards were not lost, and all statements are e-statements.  The two cards come from totally different banks.

Since neither card has been actually stolen, that leads me to belive the number leaked out somewhere.  Since there aren't statements to steal I figure it must be in a vendor transaction process.  I compared the transaction history of both cards and found only one common vendor and that was active.com for race registrations.  Both cards had been run by active shortly before the numbers turned up stolen and used by someone else.  I can't say for certain that active is the one leaking the cards, but it at least feels like it might be.  So...

You may want to be especially vigilant in watching your credit cards if you use active.com.

It could also be that the computer from which you are using active.com has some malware/virus stealing information.  If so, any passwords etc. may have been compromised. 

Actually this would be more likely than two transactions that happened to be from the same person at two different times being stolen on Active.com. 

Possible, except the transactions happened from two different machines at two different locations.  Work vs. home.

No real comment on the true cause of your account numbers being stolen, but a comment for safety (if your card offers it).

For one of my credit cards, there is an option to create a virtual account number.  Through the credit card's site, you create a temporary number that is linked to the actual account but if the temporary number gets compromised, no one can do anything with it because it isn't the real number and 'expires' quickly.  I try to use this card with this feature when ordering from new sites or sites that have been known to have been compromised.

Good luck!