This is from 2008 when my wife’s debit card had been compromised.
Past little while I have been ranting about the poor service I get from the Toronto Dominion bank and their various parts, but if I feel it is my right to write that kind of article, I must also point out when they do an excellent job as well.
Victim of Debit Card Fraud
Yup, Mrs. Big Cajun Man’s debit card was compromised some time in the past 3 months, and on Tuesday my bank account was almost cleaned out before the TD security tap turned off the fraudulent withdrawals.
How did this happen? I have no idea, because my wife has her debit card (which is now void and unusable) still in her wallet, so my guess is she was a victim of one of the many “bogus debit machine” frauds that have been happening lately. My limited understanding is that the machine or the connection to the machine is compromised in some way, so that the ID number from the debit card and the PIN number can be taken, and then this information is used to create a fraudulent version of the card complete with PIN, which the criminals then use at debit machines to remove money from the unsuspecting folks bank accounts.
The Toronto Dominion security bureau called my wife to ask if she was in fact in Montreal, taking money out at an alarming rate? Since my wife answered the phone, the answer was “No”, and thus the TD security group leaped into action and has shut off the access point and has referred this to the authorities for their action.
This does leave me with a massive whole in my finances, as the culprits got the money out before they could be stopped, and TD will only reimburse me (once it is proven to be a fraud) in 7-10 business days, so I am now living on my credit until I get my money back.
This disturbs me, because I kept thinking this only happened when you weren’t diligent with your card security, but I know my wife is diligent and this still happened, so now I am going to have to rethink security for my finances, because if this can happen once, it can easily happen again.
Financial Security Measures
A few ideas have come to mind, however, any other ideas from my intelligent and diligent readers would be appreciated as well:
- Make sure that only necessary accounts are available from my bank card.
- Set up daily limits on withdrawals which is much lower so when this happens again (and it will) the damage will not be as bad.
- Be more diligent watching my bank balances on line
- Be more diligent with my on line banking passwords as well.
- Use CASH more often! That was a suggestion from Michael James on Money as well.
Thanks Toronto Dominion , good job catching this and hopefully good job refunding me the defrauded funds.
I would ask, “What else could go wrong?”, but I have asked that question once too often and, far too often, I found out the answer is, “Much more and worse things!”.
I only use bank atms and STILL got skimmed. So now I refuse to use any atm machines ever now. Cash withdrawn from a human teller or credit card only since credit card companies are much better at dealing with fraudulent charges.