When in Doubt: Hang Up, Look Up, & Call Back

Two days ago, I read a very interesting article I’m using for the blog post entitled When in Doubt: Hang Up, Look Up, & Call Back. I’ve also done a talk for the podcast which is in development which doesn’t go in to a lot of detail but tells the story.

In the talk, I don’t give the exact amount of money taken, but there was a lot of money taken and the person in this story got very lucky.

One of the things I’ve always done, especially when I told the story of how I got taken only for a few dollars, was ask questions. I had told the story of a company I don’t do business with anymore and how they asked me for my mother’s maden name. At the time, I was using them for long distance because there was no unlimited long distance. They told me that they wanted to validate the account, and these validations were random.

What happened after that to me was quite interesting. They let me recharge the account in question, but then my information was changed without me knowing it. That’s a problem! Its similar to this story in that thing happened without me knowing it.

The only difference in my case VS this one, was that I was aware of the going ons with my account on a pretty regular basis. In no way am I saying this guy wasn’t knowing, but I tended to check more regularly than probably most. My dad said that I did it too much and that I should wait until my bill comes to do all of this work.

Let me remind users who are coming here for the first time that this practice of waiting till your statement comes is not the best practice now. You should always review your statements, even after you’ve spotted the bad transactions just in case, but it shouldn’t be your only line of defense.

Is there anything else you got out of this article that you want to bring up? Lets talk about it, I’d love to hear what you have to say. There may have been more I wanted to write, but this may spark some discussion if I stopped here. Hoping to hear from you!