Fraud Lessons Learned from a Granite Stater

Scams and data breaches are in the news a lot. Considering myself a savvy consumer, I had never been the victim of either. I had taken what I thought were all the appropriate steps to protect myself. 

That was the case when, in spring of 2023, I received a letter from a financial institution alerting me to a data breach. It offered the usual two years of free credit reports and fraud monitoring. I made sure my credit was still frozen and promptly forgot about it. 

Two years passed without incident. Then in the spring of 2025, I received a letter from the same financial institution alerting me that my security settings had been changed. Alarmed, I checked the phone number on the letter against my official paperwork to make sure it was the same number. Satisfied that it was, I called and spoke to a customer service representative. He asked me a series of questions and some things just didn’t match. I told the person I thought someone was trying to hack into my account and asked that my account be frozen. He told me that he would forward the information to a security team member. 

I thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. The next thing I knew I received another letter informing me of a withdrawal from the account of thousands of dollars. 

As it turned out, the freeze on my account was only “pending”, allowing thieves to steal the money. 

The good news is that I was ultimately able to get my money back. However, I learned the hard way that if security settings are changed on an account, it doesn’t mean someone is “trying to hack into” an account; it means they already have. 

I also learned another lesson. I had always avoided setting up online accounts, worried that they would be vulnerable to hacking. In reality, I learned that this made me more vulnerable. Once the thieves had my information from the data breach, they were able to set up an online account with this stolen information. Now I make sure that accounts are set up with strong passwords and I check them regularly. 

--Beth - Durham, NH