Posted on 08/15/2017 1:28:24 PM PDT by Sans-Culotte
I am embarrassed to post this, my first vanity after being registered lo, these many years.
Last week, one of my credit card accounts was hacked. I received an email verifying that my login was changed, and to report it if I had not made those changes. I had not done so, and immediately called the credit card company. Apparently, someone posing as me had tried to logon, and requested to reset the password. they then changed my adress to one in Miami, FL. (this is where it gets interesting). The card company said they texted a code to my mobile phone, and the code was then used to verify that it was me. I had not received a text from them that day. At the time all this was going on, I did receive a text from a number I didn't recognize. The text consisted of a period. No words, just a period. I believe my phone was hacked, and the the hacker intercepted the text the card company sent. The "." that I received was somehow involved in the hack. The credit card company suggested that the hacker had managed to forward my texts to his phone. The phone number comes up as a Miami, FL #
I called T-Mobile to report the hack. They seemed incredulous and denied that my phone can have been hacked in the way I described.
I got a call a couple of days later from another credit card company that wanted to verify that I had opened a new account (which I of course, had not). They would not tell me the address of the hacker, but confirmed it was a Miami, FL address.
I have since registered with the FTC as an identity theft victim, and with one of the 3 credit reporting agencies. Does anyone who had gone through this have any advice as to what else I should do? I did a factory reset on my Samsung Galaxy S4, but I'm frankly afraid to use it and keep it on airplane mode now and just carry it in case I need to make an emergency call. I am inclined to leave T Mobile and find a carrier who at least believes phones can be hacked. Are iPhones harder to hack?
Find a land line, call your credit card company, explain everything to them.
i am sorry for your troubles.
perhaps life lock has an after program...
I never log into any financial account from my phone. Android is not a secure OS.
Immediately put a lock on your credit line via Experion ect
Check to see if your house insuarnce includes an ID theft provision. I was surprised to see mine did. Contact credit bureaus to lock down future requests for credit without your permission.
It sounds like you were phished.
Glad that no charges were made against you CC account. I think you should close that account yesterday, if you haven’t already done so.
Not speaking as an expert in any way... just as an opinion, but it’s my personal opinion that Galaxies are significantly more exploitable. They come pre-loaded with sooooo many android apps as well as those from your carrier. I had one from t-mobile and from verizon in the past and both of them had a ton of background apps running. Between android and verizon there could have been more than three dozen. Many of them you can’t even remove. You can only disable them, if you are lucky.
Change your account numbers. All kinds.
See if you can find the Miami address.
Lifelock.
LegalShield.
I would notify T Mobile that you plan to change carriers and that you will not pay any cancellation fees, due to their refusal to acknowledge your phone data could have been hacked.
I would NEVER do any banking or financial transactions of any kind on your phone.
Call the local police to see about filing a report, so it is on file.
If you have other bank accounts and credit cards that you have used or accessed through your phone, you should contact those banks to notify them of your situation.
You should be sure to re-check your credit report regularly over the next few months.
Can there be more hidden in the “.” period than meets the eye? There is a ton of crap that happens on your cell phone that you will never ever know about. Remember after 9-11, subversive date being exchanged mixed in with the data on digital pictures? Meta-data?
Scumbag needs to be found and made to regret doing this.
I don’t either...
Also, you may have ID theft protection through AAA, AARP, or other memberships.
Don’t count on the police to help catch the guy. They didn’t do jack for me.
Don’t count on the stores where you card was used to help, either.
About all you can do is ask your card company to forgive the charges and issue you another card. And dump T Mobile.
Then call tmobile and report the phone as lost or stolen.. Shut it down.
Get a new phone,and phone number
Change ALL your passwords, ( no duplicates) notify your bank and all other credit cards that your cards and checking card were stolen, lock down the old accounts and get new accounts. Better yet go,to the bank in person
For just a $10 charge at all three credit reporting agencies you can permanently stop the agency from approving any new credit accounts in your name. Then will then MAIL you PIN that you can use to temporarily rescind the stop order in order to start new accounts of your own choosing.
Once you get this straightened out, get Lifelock. I’ve had them for about 8 years now and they have caught a number of things. Sometimes obscure things.
I got a notice from them one time that my email password was picked up on a hackers/dark website.
I immediately changed it to a stronger one and luckily nothing has happened that I can detect.
For about a bean a year to me its worth it.
Yes, FTC.gov provided the phone #s of the thre agencies (Experian, Equifax, and another whose name escapes me).
My friend`s hacker was found and police still did nothing..Friend is white,hacker was not...She had to change everything,hacker was charging up the Wazoo..... This happened 15 years ago and my friend is still squeamish to purchaset anything on the internet or her phone...
Yeah, I’d try life-lock. That is nuts! I can’t believe they wouldn’t give you the address of ‘your own home’ in Miami....
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