It’s the third day of your long-awaited vacation. While relaxing at the beach, you hear a not particularly welcome chime on your phone (because who takes a vacation from their phone), indicating a new email notification. Your bank notifies you that a significant transaction has been made on your account― a purchase you immediately realize you didn’t authorize. Your heart pounds as you log into your banking app only to find your account empty.
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If you discover you are a victim of credit card fraud, start the recovery process by notifying your credit card issuer, placing a fraud alert on your credit report, freezing your credit and contacting the three major credit bureaus. However, before taking these steps, you should determine if you are in fact a victim of credit card fraud.
Email scams known as "CEO Fraud" are very common right now. They are a type of "Business Email Compromise" (BEC). There have been numerous recent cases reported in the media, and we too, are seeing many reports by our customers. One customer described these attacks as 'rampant'. The US FBI recently put the estimate of losses in 2015 associated with BEC frauds in the hundreds of millions of dollars.