December 11, 2019 - Mitchell Knapp
It was the morning of Sunday December 8th 2019. I had just gotten out of bed and looked at my phone. I had 23 emails and a phone call/voicemail from that morning. It was obvious something had happened while I was asleep. I quickly looked at my emails and saw nothing but PlayStation purchases saying “thank you for buying FIFA 20” or “thank you for buying Need For Speed” and credit card notifications. The last notification I received that morning stated that my PlayStation account information had been changed and I realized what had happened. I was hacked. From this information, I immediately went and listened to my voicemail. It was from my credit card company stating that my credit card was compromised and they recommended getting a new one. I called my company as soon as I could, gave them my information and got in touch with the branches head representative. She helped me close my current credit card and sent me a new one. After getting everything figured out with my credit card company, I contacted PlayStations customer service center. Due to it being a Sunday nobody was able to help me. I had done all I could do for the day and had to wait for Monday morning to continue my journey.
The next morning I got up eager to fix everything that had happened the day before. I contacted the PlayStation’s customer service center once again, and was able to get in touch with someone. I gave them my account information and they told me they realized my account had been compromised and had temporary blocked it. I also asked them to refund the charges that had been and they said they would send the information to their reports department and I would hear back in 3-5 days. Finally, I asked if they could reset my account and they told me they could email me with a new sign in.
Later that night I got an email from the PlayStation network and they told me they would approve my refund request and sent me a verification link.
Here are my suggestions if you would ever experience credit card fraud:
1. Be Proactive
Contact your account provider and let them know there has been unauthorized activity on your account. The earlier you let them know the quicker they can stop it and start to reverse it.
2. Use Credit Cards to link accounts
I recommend using credit cards while setting up payments connected with services because if there are charges that you did not make, like what happened with me, you can dispute them with your holder. The opposite goes with with debit cards because if someone were to use that, you would have less chances of getting your money back.
3. Do research on companies/websites before you use them.
Finally, I recommend doing research on websites you may not be familiar with before you go on them. Make sure they are reliable and are a secured site. I recommend doing this because if they are not a reliable site they may release information to third parties that may use your information in shady ways.
Comments