First, about 6 months ago, $5.5K was taken out of my checking account via ACH. Chase refunded it and I closed out the account and spent a month reconnecting all of my finances that used that account. This just happened again with $3K from my new account. The first time it showed up as a PayPal payment and this time it showed up as a Venmo payment, but neither showed up on my PayPal or Venmo account.
I believe someone somehow has access to my phone number? Is this possible? They can send and receive texts from my number I believe. There are a few reasons why: There was a few months where I would receive calls from numbers that were very similar to mine (the area code and first 3 digits were the same). I finally answered some of them, and they were usually the same, I would say hello, and the person on the line would be sound confused and say, "hello who is this?" I asked 2 of them how they got my number and one of them said they got a text from their son from this number and was calling back. Also, I just reset my Venmo and PayPal password again to be super secure, and when I went to get a verification code, it came from two different numbers, 86753 (which is legit because I've received all my notifications from that number), but another text came from 16466796281 with the verification code. I feel like this one is fake. I'm guessing they are brute forcing my password and using my phone number somehow to 2 step verify? My passwords are way better now than they were before and aren't brute forceable anymore.
Has anyone heard of a scam like this? Is there a way to see if someone is using my number somehow? Is there anything else I can do? Thanks!
EDIT: It sounds like from the comments the phone calls and the bank fraud are separate issues, although I am not fully convinced based on the timing. I believe my Chase login was compromised. I have changed passwords for Chase, Venmo, PayPal, Google and made them even more secure. I use LastPass for all of my logins. I am also getting a bunch of people saying SMS 2 factor authentication is awful. I'm going to use Google Authenticator where possible. I still have a hard time believing SMS is worse than email authentication. Any proof on that would be appreciated.
EDIT 2: Thanks everyone! It's crazy that a lot of people are going through the same phone spoofing ordeal. There has been a ton of great advice. I'm still trying to read through all of it. This sub is awesome!
Submitted March 05, 2018 at 12:13PM by genocideofnoobs http://ift.tt/2FjmsxK
