Someone used my identity( social, name, dob, email etc ) and created an account in E-Trade and requested ACATS transfer from my fidelity account to that E-trade account. I checked my account only to find out 90% of my assets in one of the accounts were gone. No message or email from Fidelity or E-trade through out the process. Found that several other victims exist as read from the internet, but every case is from around 2-3 months. I am not sure if i get my money back, as no one said they did. I am posting here to contribute to the community to protect themselves, even though i can be easily identified now by my team members/friends. Here are the below things i would suggest you do. 1. change passwords in trading accounts and banks. 2. if you don't plan on transferring money from trading account to your bank then lock down your outgoing transfers. Enable when you need it. 3. Check your trading accounts and bank accounts at least once a day. 4. change passwords in all the websites which has your financial data. I think our privacy has been lost long ago. 5. purchase identity theft insurance? I didn't do it unfortunately. I know some of you must be thinking that i must be very careless with my social etc, but believe me iam not. This was kind of a very clever hack which exploited the feature and legal gaps. Update: The pattern is that victims have used besttaxfiler for filling taxes No MFA can protect this. Read about ACAT. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/acat.asp #personalfinance #investments
So sorry to hear that buddy 😞
E trade doesn't notify if someone had created an account with our identity. No hard copies are checked. Fidelity not doing in person authorization for ACAT. One of my friends got notified by Schwab when someone tried creating an account using his identity.
Most likely one of your computers/email accounts was hacked. I believe hackers need to know at least account number for account transfer. So it looks like identity theft (ssn/dob impersonation) was result of hacking
Best place to buy identity theft protection? Any recommendations?
my employer provides identity monitoring service ( All Clear ID) for free and I have been using it ever since this happened to me. So check with your employer too but there should be paid ones available as well.
I work at Google now. AllClear ID is a ID monitoring company
Also do check for any new credit cards issued in your name. Hackers won’t stop it here.
#1 thing i can say to you kids. always lock credit. unlock as needed.
Could you explain more?
This has got nothing to do with credit.
Now until you die IRS will send you a PIN number for taxes, I know this because I was victim of identity thief years ago. I’m sorry for you OP this sucks, I hope you can recover your money back (don’t lose hope, it takes time).
Were you able to get back your money? What is this pin number? I'm more worried about future now as my social is compromised and all the other personal details too are. Any account I open will have the same details and what prevents the hackers to do this same thing again? Or every bank etc would think twice to make business with me. Like a 2nd class citizen
For the PIN number here is the info from the IRS: https://www.irs.gov/identity-theft-fraud-scams/get-an-identity-protection-pin I recommend to get one company to help you, there are many companies that offer protection: https://www.security.org/identity-theft/best/ https://www.identityprotectionreview.com/ You need to report to the authorities that you where victim of a crime. No you don’t get treatment as a 2nd class citizen.
How come you didn't even get and email?
Banks are old school. They don’t really send alerts for acats.
Wtf
Can we stop acat from Robinhood?
Sorry didn't use rh
Sorry about this…you haven’t enabled mfa?