Fraud
Have any of you been the victim of fraud? Either via a bank account, or a stolen card or phone, or even stolen identity? This blog is timed nicely with the recent piece on forgiveness, because such an offense can require the ability to forgive. But can we really do that? I was eating my own words when, after writing about forgiveness, £400 was fraudulently taken from my bank account, leaving me panicked and shaken.
According to the Oxford dictionary:
“Fraud is defined as a dishonest act or omission made with the intent of gaining or causing loss, typically financial. This can involve making false representations, using misleading statements, or abusing a position of trust to deceive others for personal gain”.
It was a Tuesday morning, and I was due to have my salon appointment, where my hair would be beautified, lightened, toned, clipped and coffered, all at my own expense for a fine sum of money! When I went to check my bank, in anticipation of available funds, I saw that someone had been spending my money, to the sum of £400 in an Aldi in Edinburgh.
After the initial panic, and call to the bank, who, at first, were not willing to recompense my losses, I considered the gravity of this problem with an increasingly digital world and evolving artificial intelligence. The first conversation with the bank had me in tears, they were bombarding me with questions about digital card payments, clicking on links, opening emails, uploading access codes. I had no idea what they were talking about, such is my naivety. I had never been the victim of fraud and ordinarily I use the old-fashioned bank card into a card machine in a shop, better still, cash taken from a hole in the wall.
When I got my son’s old I phone, this is where, it seems, the trouble started. I activate a digital wallet, and this gave the population of Edinburgh the green light to buy what must have been garden furniture and caviar at the price they removed. After much debating, and a lot of tears (mine not the bank telephonist) they agreed that the fraud team would take on the debt of the £400 and I would have my digital wallet deactivated.
It got me thinking, just how easy it is for fraudsters to get hold of our money, in an increasingly digitalised world. My loss (well, the banks now) is a tip of the iceberg. Some people have hundreds of thousands removed. In a world where our lives are led on a device not much bigger than our hands, it is terrifying to think that these can be intercepted, and all our money can be taken. Some are probably more adept at maintaining safety than others, and I thought I was sensible. Until that Tuesday.
There are so many ways to intercept someone’s email, to mask an official website, and send out links which appear entirely genuine. It is so easy to miss a scam, to click onto an advert and download viruses which can hack into our personal details. There is even identity theft. Imagine the catastrophe that would cause an individual.
As much as the evolving technology has benefits for our lives, there are also so many new dangers. Look at the blackouts recently in Spain. Anyone relying on their digital devices to buy water and food were in trouble! I wanted to write a blog about my experience, to hope it might alert you, the reader, to be extra careful when clocking on social media adverts, or emails, or receiving one-time passcodes that are fake.
I hope I have learned my lesson, I think I am more awake to it, but as a person who can only just work my way around my phone, this is a challenge for me. I can only focus my attention on staying as safe as possible and sharing my experience in the hope of putting fraud into people’s minds, to increase vigilance. I am less confident that I can forgive! This may take another hair cut and blow. . . . .
