With all that’s going on in the world right now, you might think hackers and other fraudsters would give it a rest for a while, right? But that’s far from the case.
The dollar volume of attempted fraudulent transactions in April was 35% higher than the same period a year ago, according to a report from Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (FIS) cited by the Wall Street Journal. Luckily, FIS said most of the fraud attempts were caught before completion.
Fraudsters are getting some of the data they’re using to access people’s card numbers by from breaches that took place before the pandemic, FIS told the newspaper. It’s a method that doesn’t stop with credit or debit transactions, either—we wrote last week about fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims made in the names of people who may have had their data stolen in past breaches.
In one case highlighted by the Wall Street Journal, a man received a call from what he thought was his card issuer’s fraud department. He was wrong.
Anton Hinton got a phone call in late April from someone claiming to represent JPMorgan Chase & Co. The caller, who knew Mr. Hinton’s full name, email address and the last four digits of his account, said his debit-card number had been stolen and needed to be frozen.
The caller told Mr. Hinton to set up a digital wallet to make purchases until Chase could ship a new card to his home in Cleveland. While on the call, he got an email, ostensibly from Chase, with a one-time activation code to set up the digital wallet.
After he hung up, Mr. Hinton saw more than $300 in purchases had been made in Florida.
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We often advise people who don’t trust a call from their “bank” —say, if you’re asked to read back a generated one-time code—to hang up and call that institution directly to make sure the call is legit. But during the pandemic, with many people calling for customer assistance to request payment deferral plans or canceled event refunds, long hold times are pretty much the norm. That can create even more frustration for someone trying to get the straight story about their financial security.
The pandemic offers ample opportunity for hackers. Think of it this way: If you’ve requested forbearance from your credit card company and you’re not making many new charges, you may not be keeping a close eye on your account. Fraudsters know this and take advantage of it, hoping you won’t notice their illegal efforts.
It’s safe to say our guards are up already: People have even thrown away their relief payment debit cards because they look like scammy junk mail. And who can blame them? But while we’ve called out the increase in scam attempts during the coronavirus outbreak, that doesn’t stop the bad guys from trying.
The FTC received more than 13,400 reports of credit card fraud in the first quarter of 2020. And while that may be on par with the first quarter of 2019 (13,708 complaints), year-to-date data from the agency shows that fraudsters aren’t letting up.
And as many become worn down by weeks in lockdown, international health uncertainty and national political unrest, it’s reasonable to say you might be distracted from the minutiae of your finances right now.
If you haven’t glanced at your credit or debit card transactions in a while, give them a look today. If you haven’t already, set up fraud alerts that will automatically notify you when an unusual charge is made—or heck, set up the ones that notify you every single time a transaction is made, so you can be confident that every dollar that leaves your account was by your own choosing.
You can’t be too careful right now, even while you’re dealing with a lot. Taking small steps to shore up your financial safety can provide at least a modest boost to your peace of mind.
