Comment on How One Man Lost $740,000 to Scammers Targeting His Retirement Savings
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
After I’d learned that even Cory Doctorow got scammed, I’ve tried to be more cautious when dealing with my financial institution.
My credit union called for a survey out of the blue one time, and even though they knew my name, I offered to either call back or just avoid talking about specific account details of mine.
The one time my bank (wrongly but understandably) blocked my card, they did call me. They said they blocked my card as a precaution, and to call the fraud department at the number on their website.
At the time that was really annoying, but probably also the only right way to do it.
breadsmasher@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Cory Doctorow - not someone I know of, but, literally the first sentence
how?! Why the hell would your bank ever need to know your card details, and why would you ever tell it to someone over the phone?!
Zikeji@programming.dev 3 months ago
If you’d read the article, you’d find that he was asked for the last 7 digits of the number, not the full number. He admits he should have found that fishy, but was distracted at the time. Since his bank’s credit cards all have the same first 9 digits, he had just given the scammer the full number.
breadsmasher@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Yes. Most other banks are like that too, not unique to his credit union
wallethub.com/edu/cc/…/44066
But again, I ask, why give out any numbers at all. It isn’t ever relevant when discussing an account with your bank/CU whatever. Literally the only time its needed is to pay for something
Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
Last 4 of your card and last 4 of social are extremely common verification questions banks ask to make sure you are who you eay you are.
Zikeji@programming.dev 3 months ago
I never claimed the first 9 being unique to his CU was special, just added it as clarification, since you hadn’t read the article.
As for repeating your question, the author has his own explanation as to why (basically came down to bad timing, or in the case of the scammers, good timing).