Yesterday I received two very different and very memorable phone calls. The first was extremely exciting. I won't get into that call here since I wrote about that in yesterday's blog. The second call was scary.
I was on my office phone with a client when my cell phone rang at 6:17pm. The call was from a toll free number. Since I believe it to be poor service to interrupt one call to take another, I let it go to my voicemail. When I checked the message a few minutes later, it was an automated call from Citicards. They were calling to notify me they had detected unusual activity on my MasterCard account and request that I call back and enter a reference number.
The woman that I spoke with was very helpful. It seems that in the hour leading upto the alert, there were 6 charges to my card for Skype/PayPal. The representative on the phone immediately closed my account, explained they would be sending me paperwork in the mail to have all of the charges removed, and I would be receiving a new card for a replacement account.
Last evening I had a 6:30 Kiwanis meeting about a block from my office, so I was not able to do any further investigation at that time. This morning I took the time to call all of my creditors and was relieved to learn only this one account had been compromised. I also checked my credit monitoring program to ensure no new accounts had been opened in my name. My final call was to Citicards to learn more about the unauthorized charges and see what else I could do to expedite the process. It turns out that one additional charge was attempted after my conversation with them yesterday, which they denied.
I've written about identity theft and credit fraud in the past, but had never experienced it myself. All things considered, this was only a minor inconvenience. Many people have incurred much bigger problems as a result of fraud or identity theft. I will likely never know who made these charges or how they were able to do so. What I do know is that I have peace of mind. Thanks to measures put in place by Citicards and myself, no real harm was done. This isn't to say that I don't need to continue to be vigilant and monitor my credit a little more closely than usual in the coming days and weeks, but it is good to know how quickly and easily this problem was resolved.
Remember to always take measures to protect yourself and ask your creditors what systems they have in place to alert you in case of potential fraud. It does take a little time and effort to protect yourself, but failure to do so is much more costly.
I had someone hack into my Paypal account once which led to the hacker getting 2 of my Visa debit card account numbers. Paypal told me to change my password as my only solution and they weren't going to investigate it. Bank of America was very helpful and actually did an investigation. They told me where the hacker was located with a complete report and they notified Paypal. If you have a Paypal account change the password once a month.
Thanks for the reminder. I will make sure to do so. I hope everything gets straightened out for you with the least hassle.
Steve - I don't even remember ever setting up a Paypal account. Your last bit of advice is a very good tip. I do actually change several of my passwords on a monthly basis.
David - I was very fortunate, all things considered. It still looks as though very little damage was done and everything has been resolved to this point. It definitely was a good reminder to the dangers we face everyday.