Imagine this, you are out on vacation, with little to no cell reception, and you stop to buy groceries for your family vacation and your bank card gets declined. What are you to do? You try to call your bank to see what is going on, because you know that there are enough funds in your account, but you can’t reach them due to the fact you are in the middle of nowhere. Now your family vacation is ruined and you have no food. Nothing can ruin a trip faster than a car full of hungry teenagers, hours away from home. Things like this happen all the time, but how do you prevent them from happening?
It is a common misconception that hackers just sit behind their desk all day typing away, there are hackers all around you every day. They have card readers that pull data off of your card when you are at an ATM, shopping for groceries or getting gas. If you are looking for an easy way to keep your card safe from card readers or people “bumping” into you to read the RFID (RFID stands for Radio Frequently Identification) off of your card, there are wallets that block those scanners.
So what should you do if your bank accounts become compromised? If your bank accounts do become compromised, the first thing you should do is to immediately contact your bank and report what has occurred. The second thing you should do is to monitor your accounts closely to see if there are any changes and report those, if any changes occur. Most bank allow you to receive electronic notification or alerts of transactions on your card via text or email, it is highly recommended to set that alert system up. Third thing you should do is to ignore any emails or call from “your financial institute” that ask you to confirm your account; your financial institute would never call you to verify your account, this normally occurs only when you call or email them.
Your information is at risk every day and there is no guarantee that you will be able to protect your account information from hackers, but you can always take every precautionary step to try to prevent it from happening.
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