Reviewing my bank statements, I noticed that I several months earlier had been charged about 13 GBP by Netflix on my credit card, but only for one single payment (not recurring). I knew that the payment could not have been made by me, so I contacted Netflix who suspended the account it was connected to, as well as reimbursed me the money. What keeps bugging me though is how this actually happened.
First of all, if someone had stolen my credit card information, why would they only use it for one single Netflix payment and not e.g. purchasing things online?
Secondly, this particular credit card I only use for purchases in offline stores and I have never used it in any dodgy places or countries. I therefore do not see how my information could even have been stolen in the first place.
What I am wondering is if it is practically possible that someone could have used my credit card by accident, due to similar numbers? Given that the first part of the credit card number is not random, the number of different card numbers are significantly less than one could assume, given the full 16 digits. There are still hundreds of millions of combination, and on top of this there are different validity dates as well, but, on the other hand, there's a vast amount of credit card purchases being done all the time, making it probable that an improbable event actually happens every now and then...
Or could there be a simpler explanation?