Related story and wondering if the OP may have been chasing red herrings. I recently noticed an unauthorized charge for a small amount on my credit card (something about FB/Meta). Likely someone probing the card to see if anyone would notice. I called the CC company, had them removed the charge, canceled the card and had them send me a new card (5-7 business days). With the brand new unused card (new CC number, new expiration date, new CVV), the fraudulent payments resumed (again FB/Meta). How is this possible? The reason: digital wallets. Your credit card number, etc. transfers via digital wallets even when you cancel the card. I again called the credit card company and this time, told them to cancel all the digital wallets (there were 99 of them!). There is no way to do this online. You have to speak to a human in a call center. You then have to sit through a lecture about how all your renewing payments are going to reset and you will have to re-establish them will all merchants. "Yes, I understand that. Please cancel the card and all digital wallets!" Then you have to hold for twenty minutes (why? what are they doing? manually canceling all the digital wallets?). The lesson I learned here is that canceling your credit card may not be what you think. Also recurring payments must be incredibly lucrative and canceling them must amount to a big loss in revenue. (Edited for grammar.)