On April 9, a "Preauthorized Debit" appeared on my checking statement in the amount of $18.99. The memo field shows "HTHSVRAPR 8007432584", which of course is "HealthSaver, provided by Trilegiant Corporation" (taken directly from their web site).
This was an ACH (Automatic Clearing House) transaction, and my bank, RBS Citizens Bank, reports that this was neither a debit card nor a check, but solely an electronic transfer. Though the dollar value isn't great, this is scary because there's no "check & balance" system in place for ACH transactions.
For example, the last digit of every credit/debit card is a "check-sum" that is calculated from all of the preceding digits of your real card number. If a credit card number is entered (manually) wrong, there is a 9-out-of-10 chance that it will fail the check-sum test. However, there isn't any check-sum for ACH transactions.
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