Hello, my name’s Mike and I’m calling you from “Vindows” Technical department. (Misspelling deliberate).
He goes on something like: Your Vindows has notified us that hackers have broken into your computer and are attempting to remove funds from your bank account. Ve are here to help you.
The bad news is, HE is the hacker and if you do what he tells you, he’ll clean out your bank account(s).
I played around with one of these guys for a while one day. I was careful about any banking information. In fact, I fed him false info.
I don’t know how he did it, but he got into my bank account and transferred money from my savings to my checking account (coupled to a debit card).
He didn’t get anything. I canceled my debit card and changed my bank password. So far, so good.
These hackers are pretty resourceful. Be on guard!
Caller ID
I haven’t gotten that one but I have gotten more than a few calls recently purporting to be from local numbers. When I picked up, I could tell at once that the call was not local. When I interrupted the caller to tell them that I didn’t think they were local, I got one of two responses — some just barreled through their spiel while others rapidly hung up. Either way, I was surprised that nefarious “businesses” would bother to spoof a Brattleboro phone number.
In your case, the fact that they got access to your bank accounts is very disturbing. But from what I hear, our transaction records are not private anymore. Google accesses people’s credit and debit card data and uses that information in their data collection and ad business. If Google can buy this data, can’t other people? Very disturbing, all the way around.
I got my account hacked into a while back too but the thieves didn’t call me first….
careful
One of the real giveaways in this scam is that anyone breaking into your bank funds would be doing so at the bank’s computers… not the home computer. The “funds” are over there. Home computers log in to bank computers to transact business, but no “funds” are ever on the home computer to be stolen.
It’s like calling a bank customer at home to tell them they have a problem with their ATM – the ATM is at the bank!
…
If someone is able to transfer money between accounts on the bank’s computer, they have user info. In the above case, perhaps this person had a bunch of existing info about your account from somewhere else, and tried to call to get a final bit of the puzzle from you. ??
Thanks for this info cgrotke.
Thanks for this info cgrotke. I would never have known this.