What to Do with Your Bank

I won't say that everyone has been a victim of some form of identity theft, but I daresay it's close to "everyone."  When you expand the notion of identity theft to include someone using one of your credit-card numbers to buy a pizza, or having to be sent a new debit card because 250,000 customers of a particular bank were possibly hacked, yes, it might as well have been all of us.

I write this, and this whole column, in fact, because there are thieves and scuzzballs out there who do try to use other people's credit and debit cards illegally and will continue to do so.

I have conceded that it will continue to happen.  It is a pain in the nether regions to have to change debit card numbers, but it is a bigger pain to have a few thou yanked out of your account and not get it back.  But it will happen and I will do what I can to prevent it.

So I have arranged with my bank (automatically, on their site; it is a routine option) to send me an email every time anything debits my account above a tiny minimum.  Every time.  Now that is a fair number of emails; not a ton but enough.  I never use cash anymore except maybe to tip the check-in guy at the golf course, so that is an email for many transactions.

Now, I am pretty diligent about it -- when I get such an email, I make sure I'm familiar with the transaction.  Over the weekend I got one for an even $200.00, one that I didn't recognize, ordering from some hip-hop performer's site I'd never heard of.  OK, I wouldn't recognize any hip-hop performer.  Presumably, the scuzzball had gotten my number and tried to order recordings of the guy from his site.  Oh yeah ... and he also ordered a pizza from a Pizza Hut down the street from him.  Separate transaction.

So I called the bank, they refunded the transaction and made it pretty clear that they and the cops and the FBI would catch the scuzzball -- because they usually did.  That part was pretty easy, and it's comforting that it is, even if it is because it happens so often that the systems for catching them are pretty sound.

But the important thing is that it took almost no time to discover the breach, because I was alerted to the transaction right after it happened.  Not -- mind you, because the bank thought it was suspicious, but because I had taken the proactive measure to get an email for every deduction from my account above a small minimum.  Credit the bank, they provide an easy facility to do that online, but if you, the depositor, don't take advantage, it is on you if you get taken and can't fix it as I did.

We all have pretty much abandoned cash.  We all pretty much live off using debit cards for our financial transactions of any size.  We all are aware, or should be, that our deposits are only as safe as the effort that we put in to protect ourselves from scuzzballs.

Go to your bank's online site right now.  Log in to your account and find where your notifications are set.  Set it to email or text you promptly when any transaction hits the account above whatever level works for you.

Protect yourself.  The banks give you the tools.  Use them.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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