Over the summer, our bank login was hacked and someone got access to both our checking and savings accounts and drained them all in a matter of minutes. It was such an eerie experience. We were putting our kids to bed when my husband and I both got notifications on our phones that the password on our bank account had been changed. We really didn’t know what to think, but we figured we’d finish putting the kids to bed and then call the bank. But then, my husband looked down at his phone again and saw notifications popping up one right after the other saying that transfers were being approved for hundreds of dollars each. He looked up at me and said, “You need to go call the bank right now.” I did. I waited on hold for about 10 minutes and during that time, the rest of our money was being drained from our accounts as we waited, powerless, on hold. This was at night, so most departments (including the fraud department, of course) were closed, but we were able to speak to someone who could at least freeze our accounts until we could speak to someone in the fraud department the next morning. Even as the representative was trying to freeze our accounts, the hackers were trying to take the last $100 from one of our accounts. It was such a sickening feeling! Since I am sure I am not the only one who has had or will ever have such a problem, I thought it might help to share some things that we learned along the way. I hope these help!
1- Keep an emergency fund in a completely separate bank. Even though we had a checking and savings accounts linked at the bank that got hacked, we still had kept and maintained an emergency fund with a different bank. This money is what saved us a ton of headaches while we waited for weeks to get all of our other money back.
2- File a police report. No, I don’t think that the officer who took my report actually got enough information from me to give to some cyber-police unit who will crack the case. But, that police report is the best form of proof you can show to any creditors or billing departments who may not get paid on time depending on what payments were processing when your accounts got frozen. It is worth it if it will save you one or two (or more) late fees, right? Those things add up FAST!
Depending on the type of hack and how it affects your ability to pay your bills, you may also want to contact the credit bureaus and let them know of the situation. This would be especially true if you are trying to make a big purchase—like a home—soon.
3- Set an appointment with your bank. Go in to your preferred bank branch and sit down with a personal banker to close your old accounts and have them move any money you have left to newly opened accounts. It will take a little while, and the personal banker will have to get on the phone with the fraud department, but you will get a lot resolved in that trip. Be sure to ask for some temporary checks (you will probably need at least one or two right away) and ask for the specific date when you should expect to see your stolen money refunded into your account (more on that in a minute). Do not leave the bank without clearly understanding your new routing number, account numbers, how to log in to your new accounts, and if your new accounts are different from your old accounts, be sure to find out how they differ (for example, do you need to keep any minimum balances or will you incur any regular fees?).
4-Update all payment information. If I still haven’t convinced you to use YNAB, at least keep a list of your monthly bills (especially those that you may have set up on automatic payments through your checking account or debit card). Since my accounts were all being tracked in YNAB, I was able to go through and easily account for every account fairly easily. Either way, you will have to go through and manually update any accounts you have set up on automatic withdrawal with your new account information. Beware. I did this the very morning after we received our new account information, but one billing entity that happens to provide our internet service continued to try to withdraw the money from our closed account. I saw the problem right away (thanks to my YNAB habit) and I called the company to resolve it. The representative I spoke with assured me that I had paid my bill and that there was nothing I could do or needed to do at that time. I tried three times to explain to her that the payment that was submitted to my closed account would be returned to them, but she did not understand what I was saying. Finally, I just asked her to make a note of my call and I waited until I had a balance on my account and called again to try to resolve the issue. It was a HUGE headache that resulted in over $200 in fees (the company waived them in the end, thank goodness, but not without a LOT of effort on my part) and me making a trip into their nearest office with account info and my police report in hand.
While some companies are not so incompetent, they do not make the process easy either. For our water bill we had to use one of the new checks from the bank and take it into their billing office to get them to update our automatic payments. Be proactive. Don’t wait around for these bills to become due or you will have waited too long and then you will have a very very BIG mess on your hands.
5- Be prepared to wait. The bank told us that we would need to wait 10 business days—this translates into two weeks. On the 10th day, your refund may not happen automatically. Ours didn’t. I called the morning of the 11th business day and kindly asked them to please refund our money. They did it right there on the spot and I was able to confirm that the money was in our accounts before I hung up the phone. In addition to the two week wait, we waited an average of 30 minutes on hold each time we called the bank’s fraud department. We had to call a few times because even though our accounts were frozen and set at -$888,888.88, deposits and refunds could still go through. So we received a paycheck and two different credits to our checking account after it had been frozen and we had to wait on hold to speak to someone in that illustrious fraud department before we could have access to that money in our new bank accounts.
Above all, remember to be proactive and be patient. You can move past this! Don’t let it knock you down!
If you have already been hacked, what would add to this list? Share in the comments below.
Full disclosure because we’re friends: I am not an affiliate of YNAB, but I do receive a referral credit to my own personal YNAB account if you choose to follow my link and start your own YNAB subscription account after the 34-day FREE trial. And so do you! If you use my link, you will get an extra month of YNAB free when you subscribe, too! Also, I am not a licensed financial adviser. The information I am providing to you in this article is simply based on my own personal experience.
Wow! This sounds terrible! Thank you for sharing. I wouldn’t have thought to file a police report but that makes so much sense.
Thanks, Kristy! It was a MAJOR inconvenience, but it could have been much worse. Hope nothing like it ever happens to y’all, but if it does, I hope this helps make it easier.