Many of my online accounts were compromised last week, as described in my previous blog. I believe I have secured all my accounts, with new randomized passwords and 2-factor authentication, which is a pain in the posterior, but a small inconvenience is better than fraudsters having control of your accounts.
These hacks have put us in a precarious position of not only having no money but being $65 overdrawn. This is very frustrating as my mother-in-law gave us $150 to help us get through to payday, and this fraudulent $200 payment from Walmart via PayPal immediately wiped that monetary gift out.
I managed to get into Walmart.com and cancel the fraudulent order, and PayPal showed the money as being refunded in my dashboard at 9am on Thursday 10/22. But despite this, PayPal took the money from our bank account late Friday, 10/23, resulting in being overdrawn, with a $32 insufficient Funds penalty to boot. It is now Wednesday, 10/28 and the $200 still has not been refunded to our bank account, it’s not even showing as a pending deposit online, leaving us up shit creek without a paddle.
The charge of $150 was also posted on my Best Buy credit card, which is less of a problem, as it’s a credit card, which has more protections built-in. I reported this fraudulent charge and Citi Bank, who underwrites the Best Buy card, has canceled my card and sent out a new card. Citi Bank has not said they will take that charge off the card, but I expect them to do so, after investigating my disputed charge.
This situation has sent my depression spiraling into the pit of despair. I blame myself for not enabling 2-factor authentication on my accounts before they were hacked. Even more so as I was using compromised passwords on some accounts, which the Last Pass security dashboard warned me about previously. I should’ve taken my online security more seriously, and maybe I wouldn’t have been hacked.
My advice, don’t be like me, take proactive steps, use secure passwords, and 2-factor authentication before you get compromised, or you’ll literally pay for it, or at least be badly inconvenienced.
UPDATE, OCT 30, 2020: BACK ON AN EVEN KEEL
To close out this whole sad story, it’s now Friday, 10/30 and we finally got the $200 refund from PayPal on Thursday morning, and also got a surprise, and welcome check from one of my wife’s doctors, refunding us $100 on Thursday afternoon. Then, of course, the wife and I received our regular bi-weekly salaries today, which is now 70% gone after paying rent and our bills and debts up to the next payday, ho-hum.
Finally, our credit union refunded the $32 ISF fee, so after a week of being in the red, we are back where we should’ve been. I’m still not feeling great, mentally, but I feel better than I did a few days ago.
