So I get home tonight and see an important looking envelope waiting in my mail. I get worried when I see important looking envelopes, it's usually not good news. Sure enough, I opened it and it's from one of my credit card companies. It contained a brand new credit card, along with a little yellow slip of paper that said "my previous credit card MAY have been compromised" and that I should activate my new card asap so my other card can be deactivated. UGH! I am usually SO careful with my info, how could this of happened? So, thus begins an all night quest to find out what is going on. I'll spare you all the details, but as of now (just a little after midnight) I feel pretty secure that my info is ok. What gets me, is that the particular card that was compromised I hardly ever use. The last two companies that I did business with are AOL (which I canceled) and my webhost company. The guy from the "fraud alert", looked up my info and said that one of my previous merchants had their data compromised, so they issued the warning to my credit card, which then issued me the new card. What gets me, is that under law, the Fraud guy could NOT tell me which company had their records compromised. This just seems wrong! Because if I found out it was my webhost company, I'd switch in a heartbeat. AOL scares me because I don't trust them. They had a previous security breach back in 2001. And then of course, I need to worry now, as to how far the "bad guys" were able to compromise my info. How long will it take for me to feel "safe" again?
I did run my credit report tonight and everything looks to be in tip top shape (except for one minor error that I hope I'll be able to straighten out tomorrow).
So my fingers are crossed, that I'll be ok. Wish me luck.
PS> It strikes me as odd too, that we are told to protect our data at all costs... yet, if there is a problem, and you need to call your credit card company to straighten something like this out, you have to give over ALL your personal data to a complete stranger who won't give you anything but a first name. Kinda leaves you with a violated feeling.
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3 comments:
man oh man- i'm sorry to hear that that happened to you.
i found out a couple years back (when i applied for unemployment) that someone had been working under my social security number.... and that i "owed" $2000 in back taxes. yuck! so i had to go through this whole ordeal with the social security administration in order to get the information taken off of my "earned income" sheet that was reported for that year....
luckily i didn't have to pay for the taxes that the lady, who was using my maiden name and social, had not paid.
feel lucky you don't have a scary "double" out there.... lol
:)
Glad you got your mess straightened out, that's crazy that people can do this stuff. I'm still optimistic that I'll be ok, and that it was caught in time, but I'll always have that nagging feeling that someone out there may be plotting against me.
One thing I did learn from this is that one of the three major credit unions had some of my data wrong! I've heard how a credit report can be wrong, but I didn't expect it to happen to me. I'm kinda dreading opening this can of worms to get it fixed.
in the end- it will make you feel better knowing that you got everything straightened out and it's "behind" you.... b/c it'll never be behind you, you'll always have to follow-up, but that's a good thing.
namaste
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