It’s Fraud-Noticing Time!

Last Updated on: 19th December 2020, 04:17 pm

Whenever I think about this, this song pops into my head.

So about a week and a half ago, I was busily working away when my phone beeped and a weird text showed up. It said it was from my bank and it said that this was a fraud alert and there was a weird purchase on my credit card. Because there are so many text message scams, my initial response wasn’t “Oh my god, fraud you say?” It was more like “You say you’re from my bank? I don’t believe you!” But the message did mention the last digits of my credit card, it had no spelling errors in it, and when I looked at my account, the transaction being referenced was there. Maybe this was fraud after all.

The message told me to send a text back with y if this was something I had done, n if not, but there was no way I was writing back to a text just in case I was being tricked. After all, I didn’t think I had successfully signed up for fraud alerts, so I was still not convinced.

After talking to someone, they confirmed that the bank did send the text and they had flagged the transaction as suspicious. If I said I didn’t make the transaction, my credit card would die an untimely death and I would need a new number.

It’s weird how the brain works. When they were asking me if I had made this transaction, for a second I tried to convince myself that maybe I did and I’d just forgotten, even though I knew I didn’t. Part of my brain would do anything to convince myself that my credit card info wasn’t stolen right out from under my nose. I felt so violated. But the majority of my brain won and I said this transaction wasn’t mine and we started the process of killing my old card. I made sure that all the stuff I had bought would go through and nobody would get ripped off, and then I was very thankful that I’m an obsessively organized human and wrote down all the names of places that made automatic credit card payments. So, when my new card arrived, everything was back in business within a couple of hours.

I have since learned that all it takes to sign up for fraud alerts from my bank is letting the bank know what is your cell number. Well, that sure makes it easy. Also, that link had a helpful list of ways to know if a fraud alert comes from them.

TD Fraud Alerts text messages will contain specific information to help you identify the transaction, including:

  • Last two digits of your TD Access Card or your personal or business TD Credit Card or of your Authorized User’s Card; and Transaction information, including the $ amount, transaction type and merchant name.
  • TD will never ask you to reply to a TD Fraud Alert text message with any personal information or click on any links in your reply.

Well darn it, why hadn’t I found that *before* I got the message?

As far as I know, all is well. The suspicious transaction has disappeared from my list of transactions, and everything is set up again. I wish the bank would tell me where the problem started, but I know they never will because some people could do bad things with that information. If I knew where it happened, I would just change my password there or maybe warn the business that something might be afoot.

Here’s a message to whoever it is who thought they’d have a little extra fun with my credit card. I hope you’ve been busted before actually taking money from other people. I hope your Christmas sucks more than most, you grinch!

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