Scammed

I’ve been scammed for the first time. Due to stupidity? Maybe. I have entrusted my credit card number with large but not so savory companies, the likes of PayPal, Amazon, and all the usual. But the company I strongly suspect as the source of the leak is - get this - Equifax.

I purchased a 3-in-1 monitoring subscription from Equifax to keep track of new accounts being opened in my name. I’d heard much about identity theft when I first came back to the States and I got paranoid because a background check found someone using my SSN once. I got Equifax monitoring in an effort to protect my identity, not open myself up to credit card fraud.

The funny thing is I haven’t been the most vigilant about tracking my transactions. For months on end, I didn’t know how much I spent or how much went out. I finally buckled down and started tracking things (Quicken helps muchly) but still not as often as I should have. It just so happened that Black Friday and the looming gift-giving season had prompted me to use easy plastic over messy cash. I thought it prudent to check my account often to ensure my transactions were going through and also to ensure my flurry of online purchases hadn’t exposed me to fraudulent ones.

Lo and behold, I found a fraudulent one.

The amount was so nominal that I might not have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking. That, of course, is what those scamming bastards are banking on. Imagine how much more people they’ve duped, people who don’t check their statements. I can relate to those unsuspecting people; I used to be one of them (so VERY recently) despite how often my parents drilled financial awareness into my head. If I could lapse so easily into negligence despite having been specifically taught NOT to, then it’s so much more likely to happen with other people who were never taught this, who grew up in this materialistic culture that promotes spending, perpetual sales and the I-must-have-this-now attitude.

Lesson learned: always check your financials. Always.

And though the internet is the home of these online scams, I’m also grateful for how fast information is spread about said scams. A quick Google search turned up a blog entry by someone who’d been hit, which prompted dozens of ‘me toos’ and an official news article. I got the information I needed - mainly to cancel my card (obviously, but the temptation not to because of the hassle is quite strong) and to contact Equifax directly about the potential link. I have done both and now I am tired. I’ll deal with redirecting recurring transactions tomorrow.

Some people are all about being entirely digital, entirely plastic. I was starting to go that way but this is a good reminder that plastic isn’t as shiny as they make it look.