Scammers beware!
I always hear about email and phone scammers and wonder, "Who is possibly falling for this?" But then when it happens to you, you realize they are quite tricky. It's not always as easy to spot a fraudster as I thought.
Luckily, I had my head screwed on straight this morning. I got a phone call on my cell, which I answered, and heard a recording from "my" bank saying that a lock had been put on my debit card due to possible fraud, but everything was okay now and no money taken. All I had to do to unlock my debit card was to hit "0" and then I'd be transferred to a representative. The first red flag was the fact that I actually haven't used my debit card in at least three weeks, and I couldn't figure out who would have gotten my card info and then not used it right away. I hung up rather than hitting "0", Googled my bank's actual customer service line and called them. After much checking and double-checking on their part, there was never any lock on my debit card and the call I got was most likely a scam. Apparently, there's been a lot of this going on.
Thought I'd pass this on here! I like to think that if I had hit zero and the representative started asking for my account number and password, I would have immediately figured out something was wrong, but these scammers are sneaky and play on your emotions. I started getting all worried that someone had already stolen my debit card info - didn't occur to me until after that they were in the process of trying to do that very thing!
Luckily, I had my head screwed on straight this morning. I got a phone call on my cell, which I answered, and heard a recording from "my" bank saying that a lock had been put on my debit card due to possible fraud, but everything was okay now and no money taken. All I had to do to unlock my debit card was to hit "0" and then I'd be transferred to a representative. The first red flag was the fact that I actually haven't used my debit card in at least three weeks, and I couldn't figure out who would have gotten my card info and then not used it right away. I hung up rather than hitting "0", Googled my bank's actual customer service line and called them. After much checking and double-checking on their part, there was never any lock on my debit card and the call I got was most likely a scam. Apparently, there's been a lot of this going on.
Thought I'd pass this on here! I like to think that if I had hit zero and the representative started asking for my account number and password, I would have immediately figured out something was wrong, but these scammers are sneaky and play on your emotions. I started getting all worried that someone had already stolen my debit card info - didn't occur to me until after that they were in the process of trying to do that very thing!