They are known to retire stolen cards after a few months, then bring it out again in a year or so. If the activity slacks off, don't think that it has gone away, it has just gone dormant for a while.

I use a surge protector also, and bought one for the highest rating that I could reasonably afford (there is overkill after a while on these things). It not only makes sense for a power-off reason, like the monitor, it also means that your computer can't turn on by itself if some malware has programmed it to turn on at 3am and purge all of your files or send your personal data to a third world country.

SRS