“Yesterday I was scammed on Postepay with 6 payments in one minute of € 4.81 not authorized by me to Google Play “. Again: “Cheated for two days with consecutive charges for never made purchases on Google Play”.
There are many reports of this type that are spreading on Facebook and Twitter and also in the reviews of the Poste Italiane prepaid card app on the Play Store. Comments from angry people who talk about scams and accounts drained after a series of microtransactions, complaining about the “vulnerability” of Poste Italiane. Someone explains that they blocked the card to solve the problem and asked for a refund.
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It is still unclear how this series of operations was achieved, but many cardholders are concerned. There dynamics described in the various reports is always the same: through a series of small transactions, worth around 4 euros, the balance was reduced and in some cases cleared: “I had activated a Postepay card at the end of August by connecting it to the app, and with all the necessary precautions”, he one person wrote, adding that “they made purchases on Google Play without my knowledge (phone off), consecutively withdrawing € 4.43 5 times”. Others have reported the loss of higher sums: on Twitter, one person reported having lost 110 euros, after 25 transactions of 4.32 euros and 24 of 0.05 for payments to Google Play. The recommendation is always the same: “If you have Postepay, check the app”.
There is also who created a group on Facebook to share the stories of these “strange objections” e who said they contacted Poste for an explanation: “It seems that from the United States they used my card for purchases through Google Play. Until a few days ago they succeeded, exactly until October 24, then those of the Post Office noticed it and put in place payment blocking procedures. Meantime of my 100 euros there are about 34 left“. In his account, the person stressed that he had never used the card on the Internet or entered codes on a computer or telephone, and that indeed “the card was still closed in the sealed envelope”.
The silence of Poste Italiane
We tried to contact Poste Italiane to get some more details, but for the moment we have not received any answers. On their site, however, there is a banner that warns customers: “There is an anomalous increase in fraud relating to low-value payments on ecommerce sites involving the cards of the main operators, including Postepay”; as explained, the monitoring and prevention activities highlighted a concentration of this type of fraud on merchants who operate “outside Europe and do not adopt the authentication standard required by the European legislation on payment systems”.
In short, after this wave of reports it is good to check the movements of your Postepay card, to make sure you have not suffered any shortages: in the event of alleged unauthorized charges, you can inform Poste by downloading and completing the debit dispute form present online.
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