Here’s another brief post to file under “It happened to me, it could happen to you.” On Friday evening, I received multiple alerts from my bank that a recent bank card transaction had been declined and suspicious activity had been detected on my account. Banks use sophisticated technology to detect suspicious activity and fraud, so it’s not uncommon to run into this situation. Sometimes their technology works, sometimes it’s a false positive and sometimes it misses. Regardless, it’s scary to see these notifications or other indicators that create visions of your bank account being drained by a thief that you cannot see.
After speaking with a security specialist at my bank, we discovered that my card was being used at a gas station in Georgia. I checked and I was definitely in Illinois, so… The security specialist suggested that my card number was stolen by a credit card skimmer at a local gas station. It’s pretty common, you can learn more about skimming here:
How Credit Card Skimming Works – and How to Avoid It
Here’s what you can do to minimize the damage, respond and recover from this type of situation.
- Contact your bank immediately. Be wary of clicking links or calling the phone number in the notification that you received. (That’s a common phishing scam.) Use your app or visit your bank’s website to verify the phone number you should be calling. You can also find right contact information on the back of your bank or credit card.
- Your bank will likely ask you to verify the recent transactions that triggered the alerts. They will disable your card and issue a new one. Make sure they’ve stopped the fraudulent activity and carefully review each transaction.
- Change the password on your bank or credit card account. Even though this may not have been the way your card was compromised, it’s never a bad idea to reset your password and review the security settings on your account, especially at a time like this. Make sure two-factor authentication is enabled.
- When you receive your new card, activate it and make sure that you have security alerts turned on. Don’t forget that you’ll need to update recurring payments and subscriptions with your new card information.
- If this was a bank card, consider using a standard credit card instead for both online and offline transactions – at gas stations, restaurants, stores, etc. You’ll minimize the damage and be better protected against financial loss should this happen again.
Many of today’s conveniences bring with them risk and opportunity for bad guys to scam and hack their way into your wallet. It’s bound to happen, but if you respond quickly and take a few simple steps to secure and monitor your accounts, you’ll be prepared when it happens to you.
#SimpleSecurity
