A couple of weeks ago, I told the story of how I was victimized by a thief. Thankfully, I’ve been made whole by my financial institution, but I’m not particularly satisfied with some of the answers I received regarding how the crook convinced the bank they were me.

As it turns out, the bad guy didn’t convince the bank they were me. Rather, they convinced the bank that they were my wife! They spoofed my home phone, which made it appear that they were calling in from my number. With that, they were able to convince the bank to allow access by providing a minimal amount of personal information that could have been obtained anywhere, such as a Facebook profile.

Frankly, the bank in question probably didn’t follow their own security procedures. But if I had taken all of the advice I offered up in “5 Tips to Avoid Being Ripped Off”, it likely would have thwarted the crooks. One of the tips was to use randomly generated passwords that you can store securely in a password management application such as LastPass. I've found that using a tool such as this has  other benefits, as well.