Today's post is largely a public service announcement to encourage you to be very careful about what you trust in your inbox. I have an American Express account that I use as my main credit card and therefore I'm very accustomed to seeing emails from them on a regular basis. They email me with an account snapshot whenever I make a charge. They email me special offers for "valued cardholders". Sometime I even get emails from them encouraging me to use my rewards points. Today though, I got an email that concerned me. It was an email (in the usual Amex email format) asking for my feedback about my recent call to them. This call that they claimed I made was to activate my new card... This made no sense to me as I (1) didn't call them recently, (2) don't have a new card, and (3) don't need a new card until 2015! My first thought was that someone got a hold of my information, requested a card be sent to them, activated it, and I was about to be in for my own fraudulent card nightmare. I called Amex customer service to detail this incident and find out just exactly what was going on and it turns out that the email was fraud. COULD'VE FOOLED ME! It had an opt out option, my full name as it appears on the credit card, and several links for me to click to respond as I saw fit. (Luckily, I didn't click on these links.) I suppose it's possible that whatever page I went to would have asked for all of my information and then my original suspicions would have rang true. Anyway, the Customer Service Representative asked that I forward the email I received to their security dept so they could follow up and that's what I did. I'll keep you all posted on what happens.
The point? BE CAREFUL! I consider myself very internet savvy and I was almost tricked by this.
Stay careful my fellow Americans. ;)
(Photo: Courtesy of http://www.expandmywealth.com)
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