Banking Scams Are On The Rise - Thanks, Text Messaging

[00:00:04] You're listening to Casual Talk Radio, where common sense is still the norm. Whether you're a new or long-time listener, we appreciate you joining us today. Visit us at CasualTalkRadio.net. And now, here's your host, Leistor. Greetings, greetings, greetings. Happy Monday. CasualTalkRadio.net. My name is Leistor.

[00:00:26] I am your host. Today will be an informational episode. I'm going to preface a couple of things. It's a very chaotic month. It's overall chaotic, for a number of reasons. There's a lot of things that I'm behind on. There's a lot of things I've yet to schedule.

[00:00:44] There's stuff going on with the endeavor that's very important. We're finally making frickin' progress. I finally got them to stop to get out of their feelings. So that, to me, that's significant because I've been fighting this thing for two years. So there's a lot happening there.

[00:00:57] So I gotta focus on it in there. But also, my chair from the endeavor, not the one I'm in now, but the one for the endeavor, which is this fancy chair I spent $1,200 for. You're talking massage, you're talking all this. It's like huge wood, heavy.

[00:01:12] No single person can lift it kind of chair. It's a monster of a chair. All the mechanical, all the cool stuff that made it worth the money stopped working. So I have to trash that chair. So I'm not happy about that.

[00:01:25] But I don't like having to do that because I like the chair otherwise. But when that happened, I realized, okay, so I bought a different chair. It's nowhere near the other chair because I'm in a smaller room. So that freed up a little bit of space.

[00:01:38] I'm still in a tiny frickin' thing. So there's that. But then also, again, I'm considering purchasing something, house, place. And I haven't gone through the process since 2014. Now as I record this for 10 years since the last time I went through this.

[00:01:53] And the last time I went through this, I got essentially scammed by the state, believe it or not, with their garbage program that I'm not going to do again. Well here, I learned that they've changed. The mortgage process has changed.

[00:02:06] They're asking for crap that I'm like, why do you need this? This has nothing to do with the ability to pay back house.

[00:02:11] So I have to go down on Friday to my local, I have a local bank and see what they can tell me if they could expedite the whole process of getting the prequel. Because all of the money I would put up for this is at that bank.

[00:02:26] So that's, I have to talk to them and hopefully they'll allay my concerns and make it a smooth, easy process is my hope. But I don't know. But I also need to confirm what the servicer is because the other program I did, this was in Washington.

[00:02:40] The other program I did, it was a state program, but then they farmed it off to Alabama's servicer, the state of Alabama. So I'm living in the state of Washington, but the servicer they use is Alabama.

[00:02:51] And these jokers were the worst servicer of any type of loan I could think of. So I don't want that again. So I need to understand the servicer process.

[00:03:00] I want to make sure it's a local servicer, somebody regional, somebody who's a little bit flexible, not some garbage off to do some shopping around. So there's that shopping also on Friday. This is why it's kind of hectic.

[00:03:12] Also on Friday, I have to take the car that I'm keeping down to the shop again to and because the last time I took it to the shop. I don't think I told the story.

[00:03:23] I took it to the shop that's around the way it's like down in the bum sticks nowhere to try to get this thing done.

[00:03:30] I get there and the guy's like, well, because it's a this kind of car, you know, they don't let us have access to the tool that we would need to properly diagnose it.

[00:03:39] We can do a high level diagnosis, but in order to fix it, you're going to need we're going to have to refer you to the local dealer, the actual manufacturer dealer. And they're going to have to do a read diagnosis. So it's like you're getting double charge.

[00:03:51] So I'm going to recommend you don't come here. Just go straight to them because they're going to be the only ones that can do the true diagnosis that you need. So I appreciate that they didn't rip me off.

[00:04:00] He was cool about it and just told me go here as for this person get it done. So then I'm now, I had that scheduled before, but then garbage with the endeavor showed up now that that's calmed down.

[00:04:12] I'm trying it again and there are two weeks booked out. So this was two weeks ago. I got this schedule. So on Friday, I have to Friday early morning, crack a dawn.

[00:04:19] I have to drop the car that I'm keeping off Uber back here so I can deal with a stupid meeting for my endeavor in the crack of morning. Then go down to the bank in the afternoon.

[00:04:32] They're going to have the car that I plan to keep for quite a long time. I imagine they're going to have for like a week or two. I've got the other car that I don't want to keep fortunately.

[00:04:40] So if I have to get around, I've got that and I'll probably figure out the parking situation so I can park it in the garage because I've got a parking permit.

[00:04:48] So I've got to figure all that out in the midst of all this then there's the business, the brand taxes, business taxes, personal taxes. The other idiot that I was working with before the current contact. He never sent me paperwork that I needed.

[00:05:04] So I'm going to have to figure that out and what that looks like. Then after the side of I'm going to purchase the home under the my business because my business could technically buy the home for me right now.

[00:05:13] It pays all the expenses other than like food, right? But like utilities and everything else, the storage, all that is paid by the business on the owner's behalf, which is it's clean. It means there's less stress in terms of bills being paid.

[00:05:28] Things are just covered and rents going to come do here. In a couple of weeks and it'll be the first time that I'm paying that through the business as well. So I'm shifting stuff around, I'm getting stuff cleaned up.

[00:05:39] And then in the middle of this, I still have to, and you're not going to believe this and you're going to shake your head, but I still haven't fully finished unpacking. The reason is because I don't have any room to put some of the stuff, the storage.

[00:05:50] There's two local like internal storage places that are closets basically they're packed to the gills. So I can't use those. There's another little storage room down the hall. Problem is, I just put one of a little mini fridge that was having some issue basically the power here.

[00:06:07] It can't handle the little mini fridge. That's how bad this garbage is. So I took the mini fridge over there because I was trying to figure, okay, I've got it.

[00:06:14] Let's just toss it in there so it doesn't have to sit out because I don't have a lot of room here. The mini fridge is got to be like 60% turns of the floor area, like 60% of the floor area. So I can't really fit much else in there.

[00:06:26] So I was, when I saw that, because I hadn't paid attention to the storage since I moved in. I didn't think I would use it. Didn't think I would need it. When I saw just how tiny the storage is now I'm really pissed off.

[00:06:36] It's like, all right, I've got this chair that jacked up and it's pretty darn large. The chair would fit in there by itself.

[00:06:43] So I'm going to have to roll the chair over there, put the fridge inside the chair to get it in the storage until I can get, and then I got to hire junk haulers to take those away as well as some of the extra boxes and stuff.

[00:06:56] Then at some point I've got to get into my storage unit and start finishing, you know, not start but finish all of the cleansing. I've just got a bunch of stuff, you know, stuff that I knew I didn't need.

[00:07:08] It's just things I'm hanging onto for one reason or another. And I go through all that stuff and figure out what's wet, what's where, and if there's other things that I might consider sending into the storage that I don't, you know, immediately need access to.

[00:07:21] There are a couple of things that it's like, I don't really need that here. I can put it in the storage so I have a little bit of freed up room, you know, collectible things. So there's a lot and I'm, I don't want to say frazzled.

[00:07:34] It's more just trying to wrap my head around everything that has to happen. I'm what I was committed to making sure I still do the show on schedule as always.

[00:07:45] I told a story and this is where the episode is going to veer off a little bit and it's going to escalate because I told a story a while ago about a weird interaction I had with one of my banks.

[00:07:55] I have multiple banks just to be clear, have multiple banks, one of my banks. What happened was I got a call from the bank. It was from the bank's number and he claimed that there was some fraudulent activity. This is not unusual.

[00:08:08] I checked the number and he's talking about stuff that didn't make any sense. And he says, I wouldn't see the activity because, you know, they blocked it. The transaction is for blocked. I wouldn't see it. Okay. Now the account, the bank in question was just basically my spending.

[00:08:23] It was, it was, it doesn't keep any money in it. It's just for spending basically. And I had an investment deal, but that's all I really had is just investment account. And then the other account was I put money in there when I need to spend it.

[00:08:37] That's all it's for. So it was kind of weird thinking he was talking about transactions and transfers and he called out Houston, Texas. He said that this, there was some, he gave a name and he says some account out of Houston, Texas.

[00:08:48] I'm like, no, that's definitely not it. Then he's talking about, okay, we got to have the IT, which I knew that was kind of weird talking about it. Maybe that doesn't apply. Sure, whatever dude.

[00:08:59] So I went in while and he specifically said, you know, log out of the account. So now I'm suspicious because I work tech. So I went in and I changed my password while I was in it. Okay. But I didn't stay logged out and then he hung up.

[00:09:12] So now I figured, okay, I'm probably okay having changed the password because he's probably trying to pull a fast one here. The bank in question doesn't have so like in Microsoft or Google or some of these other services that have a place.

[00:09:25] You can see where you've logged in. So you can see if you have a login that you don't recognize from a different location, that's not a place that you would have been.

[00:09:33] They give you a screen where you can go and you can kick out the session or you can do all sorts of stuff. This bank doesn't have that feature. It's advanced, but not to that degree. So I'm not thinking anything of it.

[00:09:44] A week, you know, a couple of days go by and then I can't log in. It says accounts locked. Okay. So this is now the weekend. So I'm pissed because you got to call the fraud department for the bank to get it on lot. So I'm not happy.

[00:09:57] So I escalated through BVB because I need to get back in there because I need, I using it to everything that I spend goes to that account. It has the account number the whole night.

[00:10:06] So I eventually for a sale Monday, basically I get a call back and so they're talking it out and they basically said that from their lens, what they saw was that the account had been compromised, which I saw no activity. Nothing was weird.

[00:10:20] They couldn't because the thing is that they had gotten access to the account. They could have drained the investment account. The investment account wasn't touched.

[00:10:26] So I didn't believe what he was saying, but he was also making it seem like it may have just been the checking number and routing. That makes better sense because I've written checks against that account on a couple of occasions.

[00:10:37] So okay, go ahead and just reset everything you reset everything is the now it's all brand new. And then he changed the login just to be sure.

[00:10:45] And then of course the password was reset it one more time and it is well as I was thinking that through, like I said, nothing was abnormal in terms of like no money was drained because there's nothing there, but the investment wasn't touched.

[00:10:57] It was the weirdest freaking thing that I ever did seem nothing. None of it made any freaking sense in what it was this then I was reading up today about some.

[00:11:09] There were some updates to past information and this caused me to revisit the situation and share it to try to help some people out because it seems like it's becoming more of a thing and has not yet been determined what the root of this is.

[00:11:24] What happened was there was the only Tennessee. What happened is she had the same thing happen with mine, but through text messages.

[00:11:35] Okay, I did have a text message preceding this by didn't respond to it just basically said hey we got this thing and you know we're going to call you. Okay, so I get the call and that's what it was.

[00:11:47] So in her case she gets a text message it looks like it's coming from the bank and she had responded you know it's the automated says hey we see some suspicious activity confirmed that was you or no or whatnot.

[00:11:58] Yes no right and you respond and then in her case it said okay well the transaction was blocked.

[00:12:04] Which normally it doesn't say that normally it was just say thank you for confirming your card is now ready for use again it doesn't give any specifics about transaction so she thought it was kind of strange.

[00:12:13] So, gay so then all this information that's that should nobody else should have is divulged in the text message she thought was kind of strange.

[00:12:23] She gets a call from the bank and this is Bank of America and the reason I'm telling the stories I know some people like that garbage. So she gets a call Bank of America same phone as the text message, same number as what's on her card.

[00:12:37] Same situation is mine as in the phone match now there's obviously the spoofing risk, but the specificity of the interaction was a little bit strange in mind as well as with hers now in her case.

[00:12:50] What it was kind of strange and I don't know that I believe all of this story boy she said was.

[00:12:55] She picks up the phone and then boom the accounts get drained that's kind of weird because in order for the accounts to be drained like if somebody had access to your account so let's think this through if somebody had access to your account they could just drain the account they don't mean to talk to you.

[00:13:11] They just drain the account right. The theory and it's only a theory is by sending the text message that there's some sort of an authorization because basically you're verifying that you have the right cell phone number.

[00:13:24] New text message and then you're verifying that you have the right phone in cases of phone verification something and that you're on the right account and you can do some identifying stuff, but she said she had never shared anything and neither did I.

[00:13:38] In my case the text went to a computer goes to a computer screen that has the ability to receive a text message on it and then I can see it.

[00:13:46] That's why there's no response because it just shows it to me in case I have to get a code or some garbage and mine there was no money drained even though there could have been so this seems to indicate that they're getting a little more elaborate either that or certain banks are just more susceptible to these kinds of scams than others mine.

[00:14:06] And perhaps it's something with physical banks because the bank in this case in my case is not a physical bank. So maybe there's something to that versus physical banks that don't seem to care. They don't really care about you that much. So I don't know that.

[00:14:20] I don't know that that question. There was a couple of the similarities in this case she talked about how the other person was setting up cell. Zell is a payment service that I think is terrible that all these banks jumped on board.

[00:14:33] And if you don't know there's a company called early warning systems early warning systems is they're essentially the oversight quote unquote for all the different banks.

[00:14:43] So when you were presenting a check this is after the world of what we are now but when you were presenting a check it would go ping against early warning systems to detect whether or not to clear the check.

[00:14:55] And sometimes the check would be bounced for no clear reasons because there's something in early warning systems like say it's a location you've never been or there's something wrong with the amount or something else that causes it to reject initially without verifying who you are.

[00:15:11] So Zell is by early warning systems. It's all based on the same company. It's all the same scam. All of the banks are jumping on the cell business. I purposely do not set up Zell.

[00:15:21] I don't set up any of those digital payments and if you've listened to a while here casual talk radio dot net you heard me say I don't do all that because they're all a scam.

[00:15:29] So allegedly in her case they were trying to set up Zell and they were successful in setting up Zell with their own bank but they were using it to basically do a draw so a debit from her account which that's kind of interesting right.

[00:15:44] And I think I don't know this because I don't use Zell but I think there may be some sort of verification process that just wants to make sure that you got a response from a text message or from a phone call when connecting the accounts.

[00:15:57] In my case then when this happened to me they mentioned that it was a person out in Texas in her case it was also a person out in Texas and they said that the person there was trying to do a debit just like in her case.

[00:16:10] They didn't call out Zell.

[00:16:11] They called out something else might have been Venmo or something but they called out some other payment service where they're doing in summary what I'm saying as a public service announcement I figured I'd use the episode tell story because it may be somebody that's affected potentially.

[00:16:26] I think that it's coming from these these garbage payment services you know Venmo Zell. I think PayPal is a little bit tighter but these other little garbage ones.

[00:16:36] I think what's happening is the scammers are using those services to essentially connect to your bank so they're using it like plaid or whatever it is that Zell or Venmo uses to verify connection to the bank.

[00:16:49] They're sending they're getting access to your bank information so your debit credit you know debit account number routing transit number and they're adding it to their account for the purposes of doing it. They're adding it to their debit so they can take money out of your account.

[00:17:05] There's nothing you really do if they're doing it from that end. That's really what's happening. There's nothing you can really do about this one people online in different services keep talking about multi factor authentication.

[00:17:15] Multi factor authentication is not going to help you unless it requires a code for doing any transfers which is usually a setting.

[00:17:24] So like for example if I were to go to one of my other payment services that I have it requires that I anytime I'm doing a withdrawal it requires a code. So that's layer number one so you have to require code for any transfers that are done.

[00:17:40] You can't just have straight you know access you have to do a code. That's number one. Number two the code generation should not come from text messages and a lot of them are misinforming people telling them that say set up text message to factor.

[00:17:53] Text message to factor is less secure. The reason is because your phone your cell phone can be spoofed and they can get access to the cell phone through their phone and intercept that text message which is actually that's what I'm saying it's less secure.

[00:18:08] The only right answer is what's referred to as TOTP. It's basically a time based code so what happens is there's an app that you would download with this app. It's set up with a barcode that your bank would provide when you scan it.

[00:18:23] It creates a code doesn't require internet access. It doesn't require wireless signal doesn't require any connection whatsoever. It's more secure because the only way you can generate that code is your device has to have a sync.

[00:18:36] It's basically a sync between certain factors of what your device provides and what the upstream bank services providing that generates a unique code and then the code changes every 60 seconds or so. That code is the most secure possible but many of the services don't do that.

[00:18:51] They do text messages because they figure well everybody got a cell phone and it's less secure because your phone can be spoofed. That's called a SIM swap attack. You may or may not have read up about SIM swap attacks.

[00:19:02] They are very prevalent and were very prevalent and are increasingly so because text message codes are not secure. It was never built for that service. They only jumped on it for convenience. They didn't jump on it for security.

[00:19:14] Now that they're seeing all these breaches, they're trying to take a step back and saying, okay, maybe it's a bad idea. And we were kind of stupid jumping on the bandwagon. Yes, you were in summary. Do I recommend multifactor? Absolutely.

[00:19:26] I would recommend it not be text message based authentication. If you want to do that just understand there's a risk that you could be SIM swap attacked. That could reality happen.

[00:19:38] In my case then, since again the bank in question that was allegedly breached has multiple accounts including investments and they were not touched. But they saw allegedly a transfer attempt made from this type of a payment service coming out of Houston, Texas.

[00:19:56] I'm guessing that the vector for this is they're getting access to your checking account number and your routing account. Your routing number, basically the banks ID number, which is enough to do a draft.

[00:20:08] Basically write up a check digital check they connected to their whatever Venmo's cell, whatever connected there do this type of a scam so they get access to basic information.

[00:20:20] They just need your cell phone number or phone number, but your phone number to be able to do some verification that they got the right account. I don't think that it I don't think in any way that they're doing any sort of like login breach.

[00:20:34] I think what's happening is they're just using and creating a draft payment through their payment service of choice and then trying to take money out of it. So you can't stop them from doing that side. That's the unfortunate truth of it.

[00:20:48] You might say, well, then what are we supposed to do? I would recommend you minimize how many times you write a check certainly you have to write up some sort of a check to some service or something.

[00:20:58] See if your bank offers a bank bank check that's not showing your account information on it because if you can do that, that's that insulates you or just do money orders. The problem with money orders is they have a dollar limit to them.

[00:21:12] So if it's a larger limit applied to it, you may not you may have to get multiple of them like post office. I think it's a thousand dollar limit.

[00:21:20] So you may have to get multiple of them if you need to pay my money order money orders the safest way to do it. But if you have to write a check, just understand there's a risk that yours gets breached depending on how they handle the check.

[00:21:30] Like if it's a place that doesn't present the check electronically and they just file it somewhere. I mean, you could even have somebody working in the office that takes the check information and breaches you and you're wondering, well, why would you write a physical check?

[00:21:44] I'm not even just talking about a physical check, right? Because you could go online and say direct debit and you're still giving the checking account information. You're giving the check number, the checking account number, the routing number.

[00:21:55] You're giving them enough information to be able to draft a check on your behalf when you do that type of transaction. So you're like, well, should I swipe the card?

[00:22:03] The card can be breached too because every service requires the last three digits on the back or four if it's a max on the front.

[00:22:10] You still have to give them that security code when you put the card in and most services you have to give them the billing address on it. That's all you really need in order to do those transactions.

[00:22:19] In summary, I'm going to keep emphasizing for a lot of these services you don't have a choice. You're going to be put at risk. You just have to be mindful about don't put all your eggs in one basket.

[00:22:29] First of all, don't put all your money in one single account because there's a risk.

[00:22:34] The bank is obligated to make it right as long as you can put the case in quickly that, hey, I got ripped off or something, which assumes that you knew that happened and it assumes that you know what to breach.

[00:22:44] It assumes that you're aware of this stuff, which means you got a babysit your account. Well, you that's not what the base told you. They told you it's set it and forget it right in the digital age and it's getting a lot more advanced.

[00:22:55] It's getting a lot easier to rip you off. And so I'm simply advocating not to leave all your eggs in one basket. Consider multiple accounts.

[00:23:03] Spread your money out and around to minimize what's going to happen if somebody gets access to that account so that you're not just completely drained and left out in the lurch. I can't tell you anything else to do.

[00:23:15] I'm just simply cautioning you about something that may be a prevalent issue and hopefully people out there don't fall for that. For that different type of scam, but it is still a risk and I want you to be mindful of that risk. However we could do.