Ah, better, thanks.
However, if fraudulent charges happen on a debit card, your money is missing, versus the bank’s money being missing if fraudulent charges happen on a credit card. That can be inconvenient if your rent or mortgage check written from that account bounces due to the money being missing due to the fraud.
Precisely, @ucbalumnus, that is the greatest danger, and not a small one at all.
Yes and they are a direct way into your actual bank account. We had a debit card inserted by a wayward clerk into an altered scanner and within hours had false charges of $1200 made at the same dept. store, but across the country, with that card. Bank caught it. Police said debit only at bank machines, preferably ones in more secure locations. Also, had this happen at a restaurant and again, bank caught it. That time it was lots of $12 charges to test it out, some international. We learned…
Better would be to go to the bank and have them cancel the Visa/Mastercard debit card and reissue one that is PIN-only for ATM use.
In my S’s case his bank Wells Fargo was the most help. They credited his checking account pending the investigation. Despite trying to contact PayPal they never responded. I know EBay responded but I’m not sure how helpful they were. My S has no clue how the hacking of his EBay account happened or how they had his debit info. His PayPal doesn’t show the charge so they didn’t hack the PayPal account.He hadn’t purchased anything on E Bay in over a year. He changed all of his passwords and now uses random generated passwords.He is now using his credit card over his debit. The bank was helpful in giving my S tips on avoiding fraud. I’m proud of how he handled dealing with this.
Just wanted to add that of the July 1 spam attack messages, over 400 were captured by Yahoomail’s spam filter, but about 200 ended up in my inbox. I don’t fault the spam filter because the ones that got through all seemed legit enough. I mean, it’s certainly possible that I woke up Friday morning with a burning desire to chat about pigeons!
I called both Paypal and eBay and easily got to speak to real humans in both cases. It seemed like too urgent a situation to rely on their online contact forms, especially at the start of a holiday weekend.
Without knowing how all this happened it’s impossible to figure out how to avoid it in the future. Frustrating.
sign up for life lock.
I don’t see how that would have helped in my situation. The strength of Life Lock and its competitors is in helping to remediate serious identity theft after the fact. They also can alert you to someone trying to open an account in your name, but you can use a credit freeze to do that, and it’s free. (See helpful info from the FTC here: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs)
@ucbalumnus – I do as you described and have debit feature removed from ATM card. I have never had a debit card, and my son has survived two years of college without one also.
I have had a freeze on my credit for years. Slightly inconvenient if I want to open a new charge card, and the agencies each charge $10 to $12/freeze removal in CT, but worth the security.
I agree with @MommaJ that my security freeze will not help me in the situation described. I have my FB account linked to an email address that I do not use, but it could all still be spoofed.
Today, I THINK we paid more than we should have to a company that planted some spyware into our computer to remove it. We were stressed and hassled and I needed to get my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 to work and handed it off to H. He dealt with the company that removed it online and feels they were a bit expensive but otherwise doesn’t feel TOO duped. He said it would have taken him time and energy to learn what he needed to take the spyware off the computer so it would function, so he feels it was worth the $150 he paid. Oh well, hopefully we won’t have this occur in the future and he took good, copious notes about what they did. They worked on the computer for several hours to get it scrubbed and install the antivirus.
John Podesta should hire you. Good work.
@HImom , that stinks you had to do that. A possible approach for the future:
- Keep all your documents in a cloud service. Microsoft One Drive is great for the Surface because it is integrated with your MS login and unless you have a lot of stuff (pics, videos) the free level is often enough
- When you are infected in a way you can't easily fix, simply factory reset the tablet. You WILL have to reinstall all your apps but this is a good process anyway, like a spring cleaning. Your tablet will perform better even.
- Then you log back in and *voila!*, new tablet, all your docs at your fingertips.
Whats a pigeon lover? (From the OP)
A pigeon is an old term for an easy mark.
Himom, how do you know the company that fixed this was legit?
I recommend using a VPN on public wifi. Not cure all but better than nothing. Don’t check or make financial transactions unless necessary. You are better off on 4G/LTE than free wifi for financial transactions.
If you see https: or the lock symbol in your browser on any wifi you’re safe.
I would never use WiFi to handle my banking or credit cards. I’ve never had such an urgent financial issue that I couldn’t wait to use my home computer.
Yes, we should have just used factory reset. We had nothing important on that computer. We just weren’t thinking–momentary weakness. 
we don’t trust the cloud much.