Earlier this week I wrote an article about an incident that upset me to the point of writing the editorial, “Should Freedom of Speech Ever Be Restricted?”, instead of an internet marketing tip for my business newsletter. And then the next day I found that I had become the victim of “online bank identity theft.”
Since I do everything I can to protect my financial and business logins and passwords like always opening a new browser window to do online money transactions and keeping my anti-virus and anti-spyware software current, I felt somewhat secure. However yesterday I discovered that no matter what we do there are some serious hackers who know how to steal bank accounts.
Did they steal my identity?
No, I don’t think so because only my bank account was compromised. They haven’t tried to access any of my credit cards on online payment processors like PayPal.
Did they hack into my bank’s internet banking service?
I don’t know but I think so. And the reason I think this is the case is because of the extremely long wait times I’ve experienced every time I tried to contact the bank’s fraud department.
And here’s the real gotcha.
Although my bank knew my account had been compromised days before I found out they didn’t contact me! I had to call them and get transferred to the fraud department to find out what had happened. In fact, they didn’t even tell me the first time I called. Instead, they acted like everything was fine and told me I was being transferred to their online maintenance department to report that I couldn’t access my account online.
Now I guess in some ways my husband and I are lucky because the hackers didn’t get any of our money, I found out within a few days of the incident and we have another bank account with a different bank that we can still use. However even though we’re lucky it’s still causing many problems because it was our primary bank account that was hacked.
Our primary account is the account where my retirement payment and my husband’s Social Security check are automatically deposited and from which we pay our monthly bills. Some bills are paid automatically every month just like the deposits.
As of a few days ago our hacked account was frozen for withdrawals and payments but was left open to accept deposits. (Don’t ask me why, that’s the way the bank does it.) That means our checks can go in but we can’t get any money out and automatic payments are denied. Yes, even those we’ve been paying for years through this account will be denied.
Of course having an account that will take your money but won’t let you have any of it back isn’t too acceptable. So now we’re in the process of transferring the old account to a new one. Unfortunately this takes a few days for the bank to do so we won’t have a working bank account until the first part of next week.
Since we don’t have an account number for our new account yet, my husband and I have called about our automatic deposits. Ready for a shock? Social Security will mail him his next check because he called in time. My pension check however is still in question because it’s too late in the month to stop the automatic deposit. That means if everything goes correctly they’ll try to deposit it and the deposit will be denied (we hope). Then a few days later they’ll catch that a payment wasn’t made, issue a check and mail it.
I’ve also called the companies we pay automatically and fortunately they have all flagged our account to not expect a payment until I call with new information.
With all that’s gone on and all the work I’ve done and must still do to get this mess straightened out you may think I’ll stop doing internet banking. But I won’t. And the reasons I won’t are because there are so many ways for people to steal information and money and even if I stopped my accounts would still only be as safe as the bank’s security measures. And while I won’t set up all my bills to be paid automatically since I don’t like everyone having access to my account, I will still have a few set up that way because it was of an automatic payment denial notice that told me something was wrong.
The one thing I’ve learned from this whole mess is that it’s good to either have a second account at another bank or a place where you keep some cash. When we set up our second account we didn’t consider it an emergency account. We set it up to manage the expenses for our home renovation. However now that we haven’t been able to access our primary bank account for a week and we’ve had to pay bills and buy groceries during that time we’re extremely glad we had it.
I sure hope next week is better!
Susan
