Just after rising, this morning, while checking messages and e-mail; I saw that overnight I received a couple of messages from my bank's alerting system saying that there were "country not provided" charges made to my card.  Logging into their online banking system and investigating further it seems that in the overnight ( after 10:10 PM ) there were about a half-dozen charges from the places like:

  Diet Max (EL TECAL) 800.320.2983,
  LeanSpa (CT) 888.839.9990,
  RN *Real.com (WA) 206-674-2650  and
  Mni*CreditReport.com (CA) 866-883.3309

Googling the phone numbers for each of the merchants revealed several pages on each vendor / merchant that caused me concern.  I don't think that the merchants are, themselves, involved in this, just that many folks seem to have concerns with the "services" they offer and in some cases, their billing practices.  I've never used any of them and have no interest in, what I suspect, are their products.  I chose not to call the vendors, to investigate directly, to preserve the fact that I've Never had any dealings with the folks.

I'm hoping that there are no new unauthorized charges!

I called the bank to report the compromised card and to have them close the card and issue a new one.  While on the line with the CSR at the bank I signed up for (a second) credit monitoring / privacy protection service.

There are still a few steps in this process, so I'll have to be diligent and systematic over the next few weeks.  I'll also have to check into my previous statements to see if these kinds of charges happened in the recent past.  There may be nothing that can be done about the past charges, if there are any, but it might lead me to understand where or who is behind these unauthorized charges.

Good Luck folks and remember to review your card & banking statements regularly!