psa part I

LINK: psa part I

I got a text from my brother and he wrote:

My co-worker’s retired cousin lost her entire IRA in Fidelity due to an email scam. She clicked on a link from what she thought was Fidelity and then all $780k was gone. Email told her that she needed to do something with her account. She tried to kill herself cause of how distraught she was. I called XXXX and they said there’s an optional ACAT (transfer out) restriction option. Prevents assets from being transferred out to another firm, helps protect specially against unauthorized ACAT transfers while still allowing normal account activity. I’m gonna do this to my checking account as well.

I felt horrible for this lady. I can’t even imagine. To follow up, she did notify the feds but she was told that she was one of thousands of victims. I don’t know if they’ll be able to recover her funds… but I’m hoping that she gets it back.

Rule of thumb, I generally do not click on links through any e-mail. If I get a suspicious e-mail, I’ll go to the actual website in question. I also put a credit card freeze on Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. This helps prevent unknown people from opening accounts under my name. It is a free service to do it online. It literally takes 5 to 10 minutes to do this on all three credit bureaus.

My brother and I have done everything to try to protect my mom and her assets as well. Luckily, my mom is super apprehensive about these things and never clicks on anything. She’ll always show me the e-mails or text messages and sure enough, it’s nothing but fucking scams.

Another hot take: don’t keep a balance on your Venmo or Paypal apps. It’s also better to link those accounts to a smaller checking account, not your main or major one, just in case you encounter a breach and get completely wiped out.