Fraud Warning

        One of the scary things that all of us face today are the many attempts to scam us and to steal our identity.  Some of these come in e-mails that falsely tell us that we need to click on a link to update our existing accounts and if we do, they steal our identity.  Some come in phone calls like the common one which tells us that our Windows on our computer has been infected and we need to allow this company to have access to our computer to fix the problem.  Some come with devices added to ATM's to steal our debit card or credit card numbers.  Others come with attachments to e-mails or in replies to Facebook postings.  It appears to me that these attempts are becoming more clever and much  more frequent.  And many, especially seniors, are taken in by these criminal actions.
          So what does one do?  First, you never reply to e-mail links or requests to verify or update your information.  You don't open up attachments.  You don't give out your information online unless you are on a secured site (https).  You shred all documents that contain your address, account numbers and personal information.  You use your credit card carefully and stop using your debit card.  Doing these things may help protect you. 
          But criminals are very clever.  We have been doing all of these things, and, yet, somehow, we became victims of fraud.  We don't know how our information was secured by criminals, but despite being very careful, it was.
          The night before my bypass surgery my wife received a call from Macys.  She was told that I needed to call them to open my credit card account.  She said that we didn't want a Macys card, never applied for one, and that since I was in the hospital I couldn't call.  The lady told her that I had applied.  After getting nowhere, my wife finally hung up on her.
          The next day when I had surgery, my wife found that she could no longer use our cell phone and nobody could call her.  After a day or two of frustration she went to a local AT&T store and was told that they could not help her because the account was in my name.  The fact that I was in the hospital after major surgery made no difference.  So from my hospital bed I contacted AT&T using the hospital phone and had them add her name to the account.  Then back to the store she went where she was now told that our phone service had been turned off because we had purchased another phone with a different contract.  As it turned out, somebody had stolen our identity and had purchased a $500 iPhone from Apple and had used our account number.  We then had to contact AT&T's fraud department and, fortunately, they believed us, canceled the new contract, and turned our cell phone back on.  However, a month later, our AT&T bill showed an additional charge of nearly $400 in charges for calls overseas. A call back to AT&T took care of those charges.
         About a week later, after I was released from the hospital, we received two Macys credit cards in the mail.  But we also received a separate letter from Macys which told us that they had some difficulty verifying our application.  We called their fraud department and found that somebody had already charged over $400 to this new account which we had never asked for or authorized.  They agreed to cancel the bill and the account but we had to complete a fraud report for them.  They recommended that we also contact the local police, which we did.  An officer visited us and gave us a case number to give to Macys.
          We thought this fraud was now all done until we received another letter, this one from Pay Pal which told us that they couldn't open an account for us because they could not verify the information which we provided.  Another attempt to use our information but this one was stopped before any damage could be done.
         We contacted one of the credit bureaus and they agreed to put a 90 day hold on our account and ask the other bureaus to do the same.  So have we reached the end of the fraud attempts?  We certainly hope so but are watching all of our accounts very carefully.  We were concerned that our income tax accounts might also be compromised or stolen, but, PTL, those did process smoothly.
         Now we still have no idea at all how our information was stolen, but it was.  And this has been a very scary and time consuming experience that I hope we never face again.  The moral of our story?  I guess be vigilant, be careful and never assume that this couldn't happen to you, because it can.