A day or two ago, I received an email from my financial instution that fund was deposited to my account from another financial institution except no deposit was made. I called the financial institution and they have no record of sending me the email. They are investigating and will take a few days. In the meantime, is there any cautionary measure I should take other? My bank account is also acting weird. When I logged in yesterday to pay a bill, it showed a pending payment to my credit card account that I didn’t post. The bank customer service on the phone was no help. I am waiting for the bank to open on Monday.
Was the email really from the financial institution? Look carefully at the email address.
Change your passwords on all accounts asap.
One trick is to hover over any links and see if it’s a third party. Just don’t click the links.
I’d call the cc company and verify no payment is on autopay.
I might call back and see if I got a savvier bank service rep. Go in on Monday.
And yes, change passwords asap.
Yes, it is. I compared with other emails from the institution. I did change all the passwords except the bank account. They somehow made it impossible for me to change passwords. I’ll take care of that when I go to a branch tomorrow morning.
Call or check online and see if there is a fraud dept. that you can talk to rather than a general customer service number.
Fraud lines are open 24/7. Call your bank TODAY.
Fraud should also help you change the account password.
Thank you for the tip about fraud department. I called and got the password changed in my bank account but am disappointed that the customer service brushed off my concern. They said nobody will hack my account to pay my bill. They have no way of knowing if it’s posted from my IP address. Good thing I keep only minimal funds in the bank account.
Never click on a link in email related to banking, credit cards, Amazon accounts, etc. Especially, unsolicited email. If you think something is legit, fire up your browser separately, manually enter the main URL (e.g. bankofamerica.com), and then go to your account to see what’s up.
^This.
What happens if you click on the link? There was no link to click in the email in question. But I had another incident involving AppleID. Got an email about renewing spotify subscription. I didn’t subscribe to it. The email include a link to Apple website with a popup window to cancel the subscription and get a refund asking all kinds of personal information, I didn’t fill it out but I did click the link.
The worst thing that could happen is that a virus or some sort of spyware will be loaded onto your computer. It could be a simple phishing attempt just asking for your password and personal info, like you described. Or it could be both!
NEVER CLICK THE LINKS!
Clicking isn’t always the issue. Often, it’s that the sort of trusting individual who does click is probably going to go ahead and do what the third party says: enter ids and passwords, bank acct numbers, SSN, and more.
Yes, could add spyware, but you should have a series of anti malware and antivrus programs you use.
And since many phishing attempts are blind (make up tens of thousands of emails and see which gets a response,) you might be inadvertently verifying your email address for a slew of ads and other junk stuff.
I’ve gotten email from banks I don’t use, pleas to log in and update my paypal account- never had one. But I’ve also suspected BofA emails that turned out to be legit.
On my browser, on my laptop, I can hover over an email on the list, right click and select View Message Source. Usually, I can then read through and see both who the sender is and what the message is or purports to be. It’s a preview.
They may hack your account to make a small payment on the bill to see if they have access. The person you spoke with should know that.
I bank at Suntrust and have had a crazy issue the past two months where my mailed bank stmt included someone else’s checks and not my own. Same person, two months in a row, after 25 years with no problem. I also had difficulty getting through the automated phone system to find a suitable person to help, so I tweeted their customer service and rcvd an instant response, they have opened an investigation, and so forth. I also turned off receiving mailed bank stmts. They suggested changing my bank acount, but I don’t keep much in that account and I have been checking it daily - nothing weird happening. Just a disconcerting situation.
I want to clarify that using Twitter was my main point. This is the second time I have had some sort of customer service issue and found calling them out on Twitter got me an immediate response.