Time to share a little story about a 10-year old boy and the Mom that might allow him to see 11.
You see … on Sunday, September 29th at about 9am, I was laying in bed in my room and Jason was supposed to be watching TV in the living room. I saw him walk back in to his room – where the PC and the wireless hub are located (it was close to the cable outlet so it worked well at the time.) I figured he just went to retrieve a toy or something like that. After awhile I realized that things were too quite and he had never returned to the living room.
I got up and used the stealth Mom super-powers to go quietly to his door and quickly open it. He jumped up from in front of the computer and quickly slid in the keyboard tray. I made him move out of my way … and found my debit card (the ATM card with the Visa logo) on the keyboard drawer, tucked under the keyboard.
He tried to tell me the cat must have brought it in to his room.
I didn’t buy it. He was grounded from all electronic devices for the day – no TV, no computer, no gameboy, nothing. I told him then that if he used the credit card he should tell me now because I *would* find out later. And he would be in a lot more trouble when I did. He insisted he hadn’t used it.
My instinct was that he might have tried to sign up for a membership at a site like KillerSims.com or someplace like that – where you get more goodies if you are a member.
Late last night I decided to look at my online bank statement – I wanted to see if my PayPal fund transfer had gone through. Hmmmm… well, lookie there. 9/29 – a charge for $24.95 from CCBill.com. Interesting … very interesting.
I called CCBill.com this morning – their 800 number was on my bank account. I was asked for my membership name. The conversation went a lot like this:
Me: Uhhh… I don’t even know if I have a membership. I just discovered a charge on my credit card.
CC Guy: Ok, what’s your account number and I can look it up.
Me: Ok (rattle off account number.)
CC Guy: Christine Selleck? (Address?)
Me: Yes, that’s me … but that hasn’t been my address for years.
CC Guy: Do you know a Jason?
Me: Yes, my 10 year old son. Who hijacked my credit card a week and a half ago.
CC Guy – with a tone of shock: 10 years old? Uhhhmmm…
Me: What did he use to buy with it?
CC Guy: Uh, well … he signed up for a porn site.
Me: Hysterical laughter Really? Oh my. Which one? Oh my.
CC Guy: TeenNudies.com. (No – I’m not linking it. You want to go there you’ll have to type it in yourself.)
While I laughed non-stop, he proceeded to kindly offer to cancel the account for me. However, he couldn’t reverse the charges. So I had to call the bank for that.
“Hello? I’d like to report an unauthorized use of my bank card. My son took it out of my wallet and used it to sign up for (insert dramatic pause) TeenNudies.com”
The bank woman was cracking up as much as I was. Even funnier (well, if you are amused like I am) is the fact that in all her years of working there she had never had a call like mine – until earlier today from another mom!
The computer is losing it’s keyboard & mouse tonight. I will have them stored in a safe place where he can’t get them. He won’t be using the computer for the rest of October. I will be setting up logging on the wireless hub. Special permissions for his very own log-in on Windows 2000.
TeenNudies.com??? Oh dear Lord. Puberty has arrived, hasn’t it? I’m in trouble now…
Anyone ever try out CyberSitter? Feedback? Any other Mean-Mom tracking software packages out there I can try?