Unauthorized subscription to Google Cloud using my credit card 15k$
On March 30, I received an email from Google saying that Google suspends the possibility of making payments for products and services using this account. As I didn't make any weird purchases with this card on Google portals, I ignored this message
On April 1, I received an invoice for March for 15k $ = 65,131.19 PLN(attachment invoice) Today, on April 1, I restricted my credit card at the bank, I also reported unauthorized subscriptions to Google. Unfortunately, this can only be done by electronic means and not by phone. Thus, I have no confirmation that someone will take care of this matter. I am afraid of issuing another incorrect invoice. I also can't disconnect a credit card from a google account. This is blocked by Google.
To prevent further unauthorized movements, I also changed the password to the google account to which the credit card was attached and reserved the card itself in the bank. I already opened to claim for this unauthorized payment. Please help
/We were unable to confirm that your purchases were fraudulent. It often happens that this type of shopping was made by a family member or friend./
I do not understand. I have never created the Google Cloud account and noone from my family also. I have created new request because it is not possible to respond to previous one. I'm terrified with this respond. I will never add my credit card do google account again. What I can do more??
Because you didn't have an account with Google Cloud I'd treat this like any other fraudulent transaction: get your bank to reverse it. The process is called a chargeback, in my experience it works pretty well, you can see more info here: https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/consumer-topics/finan...
Call the credit card department of your bank, the number is often printed on the card and will be different to the bank's regular account helpline. Tell them your card was stolen, you've reported it stolen, you've tried to resolve things with the merchant (Google) but they haven't replied. Tell them you'd like to reverse the fraudulent charge.
Someone from Visa or Mastercard will contact you a few days later to get a statement of what happened: make sure you tell them that you didn't have an account with google cloud before (your card details got stolen not your Google Cloud account got hacked) and that you make a good faith attempt to resolve things with them (show Visa the emails you sent Google). The bank should give your money back in a few days.
Either way, I'd back up all my google data now.
TechBro8615 is right, this isn't a 100% clear case for a chargeback, but it's worth a shot.
- Use password manager with the master password at least 16 characters long (it makes brute forcing activity economically unreasonable)
- Change passwords on all your accounts and setup 2FA
- If you use cloud providers for enterprises, always setup limits and notifications, also you have to purchase paid support (it costs around 100 to 500 per month) to talk with human when something happens
- Can't afford the paid support? Probably you should reconsider the need for enterprise cloud provider and something like linode/DO will be good enough for your goals
- Consider paying for your email and setting up a custom domain to control your identity
Good luck with your case.
Worth noting that this can be more dangerous if you do not do it properly. If the hacker can compromise your account at the domain registrar, they can route the mail to their own server. This has happened in the past.