Security Tip Saturday

It's been one hell of a week, faithful readers.  Work was insanely busy, and I barely had time to go to the bathroom or get a cup of coffee all week long.  And on top of that, I had to deal with a very scary sitch:  someone hacked into my Walmart.Com account and tried (key word) to make two purchases totalling over $1300.  Thank goodness for Lifelock and the Card Fraud Detection software that my credit union uses. 

It turns out that the letter I received last week from the Card Fraud Detection Center was legit, even though when I did numerous searches for the 800 number on the letter I got info saying that it was a hoax.  First lesson -- we can't believe probably 90% of what we read on the internet. 

I called my credit union on Tuesday morning (while I was in the midst of a major crisis at work) and read the letter to them.  They told me it was legit and for me to call the number listed.  I called the number, and told them that there must be a mistake; I check my checking account at least a couple of times a day, and every charge that was listed was a legit charge made by me.  The guy asked me "On September 27 at 1:49 in the morning, a charge was attempted at Walmart.Com for $838.90, and our software blocked it.  Thirty minutes later, another charge for $438.90 was attempted, and the software blocked it, too."  I told him "The only time there is even more than $800 in my checking account is every other Friday morning at 12:01 when my paycheck is deposited.  Then within a few hours most of that is gone for bills."  He snickered, trying to maintain his stern professionalism.   He went on to say that I had two choices - to put a partial block on my debit card, meaning I would have to set up and use and additional PIN number when making a purchase in an actual store, but that I wouldn't be able to use it for online purchases.  Or I could put a total block on it and get a new debit card. 

Within a matter of just a couple of minutes, the old debit card had been blocked and cancelled and a new debit card was ordered.   I felt a little better, but decided then and there to make changes. 

First of all, I will no longer store my payment info for anything online.  Sure, this will only be a slight inconvenience, but it will keep me safer.  When my new debit card arrives and I am back to making payments, I will be 100% sure NOT to store the info at those sites, no matter how secure they are.  Second, I am going to use a prepaid debit card when I make any bill payments online or purchase anything online.  It will only take a minute to transfer money from my checking account to the prepaid debit card.  And I will transfer the money as-needed, and leave only a $50 balance in there; if someone were to hack in and get the prepaid debit card number, they won't be able to get much money.   Third, I'm going to try to be old school like the 'Rents and a few friends and try to pay with cash as much as possible, instead of whipping out the debit card for every little thing.  I'm not going to be toting around a purse full of cash, mainly because I don't have enough cash to fill one of my purses, but I will anticipate the next few days and get money from the ATM or from the credit union in person.

I hope that you, faithful readers, might learn from what happened to me.  Take a minute to think of how many places online that your payment account info is store -- Ticketmaster, Amazon.com, practically any online store.  Take another few minutes to go in and "un-store" that payment info.  You'll be glad you did.