{"id":5362,"date":"2022-09-19T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=5362"},"modified":"2023-04-18T11:23:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T17:23:59","slug":"monday-wisdom-giving-fraud-alerts-high-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/19\/monday-wisdom-giving-fraud-alerts-high-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Wisdom: Giving Fraud Alerts High Priority"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/h4>\n

As we\u2019ve discussed before<\/a> in multiple instances<\/a>, getting eyes an account ripe with shenanigans is a good path to a shutdown of at least that account, and probably all accounts held at an institution. So you should place a high priority on avoiding the prying eyes of an analyst when your account is filled with gift card purchases, payments by phone, money order deposits, anonymous payments, or anything else that banks don\u2019t like in bulk.<\/p>\n

Fraud Alerts<\/h4>\n

Perhaps the quickest path to an analyst from a bank\u2019s fraud team looking at your account to do nothing when you get a fraud alert. That\u2019s because when a fraud alert is generated, banks will put your account in a queue for manual review and (hopefully) notify you about the alert via a push-notification, text message, or email. Good banks will typically service that queue within 24 hours, while other banks like, I don\u2019t know, Citi, can take up to a week to get through that queue. When an analyst pulls your account out of the queue, they may not like what they see and give you the axe.<\/p>\n

If, however, you preemptively clear an alert, it\u2019s almost always removed from the queue and no analyst looks at your account. Even better, fraud detection algorithms are usually trainable and a cleared alert means it\u2019s less likely that you\u2019ll see another alert in the future.<\/p>\n

So when you get a fraud-alert, the action item is obvious: Don\u2019t procrastinate. Just clear it as quickly as possible to keep anyone from looking at your account, either by responding to the alert or by calling the bank\u2019s fraud line and hopefully doing it with an automated system. Bonus tip: if you can\u2019t clear an alert with an automated system, calling outside of normal US working hours is more likely to get you to a customer service representative that lives in another country and is generally more apathetic about what happens in an account.<\/p>\n

MEAB Scaremongering<\/h4>\n

So that we can appropriately calibrate urgency here: There\u2019s buying a gift card or two and depositing a money order once a month, and then there\u2019s going ham. If you\u2019re not in that latter category I wouldn\u2019t worry too much and just keep doing what you\u2019ve always done. If not though, keep the bank\u2019s analysts out of your accounts!<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A captured screen shot from Citi\u2019s soon to be released fraud alert verification system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction As we\u2019ve discussed before in multiple instances, getting eyes an account ripe with shenanigans is a good path to a shutdown of at least<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":2,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credit-cards","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5362"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6943,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5362\/revisions\/6943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}