PSA: Be Aware of your emails

[DIY-Stu]

Please don't make the mistake my wife just did. As of this moment she's locked out of her online banking due to verifying a transaction through an email.

If you receive an email from Wells Fargo. Then the same exact email will be in your Wells Fargo Messages Tab inside your account online. So when you get that email that says you need to do something, Close it. Open your browser as you normally would and goto your banking like you would on any other day that you DIDN'T get that email. Then once securely inside your account THEN look at your messages. If that email doesn't show up then it's safe to say the email that came to you was a fake.

At this time the only thing we know is they changed the email account and delivery preferences in her account since that gets sent to both your new and old email addresses when you do that. Luckily Wells Fargo caught the action and closed the online account service. So now we get to lock her stuff down. We also have to lock down her credit since the info that we know they had access to was stuff like:
Full Name
Address
Social Number
Phone Numbers
Email Address

Basically anything you would need to steal an identity.

So For the sake of yourself. Watch what you click. Make sure you have a status bar being shown on the bottom of your email screen and your web screen so you can see the link to where you are going to go if you click.

Believe me when I say Chase Bank doesn't use rebecca???.ca as their web address.

Stu

[rebapuck]

Thanks for the tip.

[steve smoot]

You should never respond to any email that ask you to verify personal info. PERIOD.

If they claim to be from your bank, it is a scam. Your bank will not send emails requesting info.

[Dusty82]

What Steve Smoot said!

If you get any message or e-mail from any entity asking you to confirm anything, provide any info, or wanting you to click a link or download an attachment, DON'T DO IT! Close that e-mail or message and call that entity at a phone number NOT provided by the e-mail or message to check it out. They may ask you some questions about the e-mail or message to help investigators track down the sender, or they may not. Regardless, CHECK IT OUT BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING!

Same goes for phone calls. We had a rash of calls here locally last week from someone claiming to represent our local power company, NV Energy. NV Energy says someone has been calling customers, demanding payment, and asking for credit card numbers. The person says power will be shut off otherwise.

NV Energy officials say they never call and ask for credit card numbers, even if payments are late. Customers have to call and ask to use a card to pay.

They recommend that if you get this kind of call, call the police.

The sad fact is that there are just some bad people out there who want to prey on all of us. We gotta be careful out there folks.

[DIY-Stu]

If you do bank with WELLS FARGO then 99% of the time your Login name is your Social #. CHANGE IT! Get your SSN off of the account period. Had this been done her social # wouldn't be floating around now. Luckily throughout the day I have found we have to ability to LOCK and FREEZE her credit report info through the 3 credit reporting companies. We are now in the process of completing the forms to get it locked down. We have our cars, we have our house, We don't need anything else that needs credit info so.... LOCKING OURS UP WILL BE EASY TO DO. Also if you do need your credit checked for any reason then you can ask which one they use and unlock it ONLINE. Then Lock it back.

[DIY-Stu]

Well I thought My bank accounts were safe.... In the eyes of the bankers since she has one debit card that has her name on it that pulls from our joint account then that attaches her name to mine and all of my banking gets locked too. Wish they would have told me that before I nearly had to wash dishes to be able to pay for our dinner. Luckily I had a paypal account that even though didn't have money in it has a backup from my bank account. I can just hear the Bank computer conversation now.

Paypal: " I have a transaction, Do you 'Bank' have the funds?"
Bank: "Well here's my balance"
Paypal "Good you have sufficient funds. Charge honored. Now give me this much."
Bank: "Sorry I can't do that since this account is Locked from Withdrawals."
Paypal: "Oh CRAP! Why didn't you tell me that."
Bank: "You didn't ask if you could have the money you just asked if I had it!"