I use Chase as my bank. It has the option to send you an e-mail daily with your balance and all transactions for the prior day. It takes me about 10 seconds to verify it and then just delete it.

It also will allow you to setup text or e-mail alerts for deposits or withdrawals over $X amount only.

I have withdrawals set at $99.99 and deposits over $400. More than once the withdrawal alert has warned me that I was getting ripped off and was able to resolve it by calling immediately and say "I didn't do that. Send me a new debit card."

You should see if your bank has something like that.

A friend discovered a little over 2 grand missing from his checking account in Indiana. Turned out he had made a mortgage payment on a nice house in Arizona. He got it back, but it took 3 weeks and he never got a real explanation.
He is also a creative and not always on top of his financials. Life is more interesting than money for the creative sort of human.

Someone tried to buy $1,000 worth of porn using my moms card.

(wasn't me)

So far USAA has been very good at detecting potential fraud, and shutting down the debit card.

I have also been very happy with my Chase Visa card, and the way they manage my accounts.

Bank account security is awful. It makes no sense, but the fact is: anyone can paste together an electronic check and deduct money from your account.

When I was closing down my mother's affairs after her death, numerous companies offered to settle her final bill over the telephone. Could I please just tell them her bank account number and they would deduct the amount owed.

Please realize just how horrifying this is: I call up, some random guy they've never heard from before. Based purely on what I tell them over the phone, they want to deduct a bunch of money from someone's bank account. And the bank allow this!

We get all worried about the (genuine) security problems in the Internet, while our bank accounts are wide open to the most trivial kind of fraud. It's like worrying about the quality of the lock on your front door, when your back door is a gaping hole.

Thanks, Jim P. And I have also been very happy with my Chase Visa card. They use Lexis-Nexis financial to see if there's some odd charge on your account.

And a_random_guy is right:

Bank account security is awful. It makes no sense, but the fact is: anyone can paste together an electronic check and deduct money from your account.

I also like this daily email alert thing. I don't have a lot of transactions going. This wouldn't be a big deal.

And this, from a_random_guy...right on:

our bank accounts are wide open to the most trivial kind of fraud. It's like worrying about the quality of the lock on your front door, when your back door is a gaping hole.

You think banks are bad? At least there's a lock on the front door...

You phone bill is effectively a debit card. The sneaky thing there, is they are always (legitimately, in some sense of that word) raising the rate, a little bit, by few dollars - a $36 bill turns into a $39 bill. Whatever, right?

Cramming on phone bills is THE way to get free money. Phone companies don't do any kind of auth - not even asking the requester what the name on the account is. So crammers ask the phoneco for money for a "service" in some random name, on the order of a few dollars a month. Phoneco generally says, "okeydokey how much again?" And if you don't catch it in that few-month window of time... (who looks in detail at their phone bill every month? I am sure somebody does.)

When I caught it, they (BOTH, phoneco and "service" provider) were EXTREMELY apologetic, and refunded my money IMMEDIATELY. But you know what? I am sure they can afford to, because they must make truckloads of free money, little by little, off of truckloads of people.

They don't generally tell you this, but you can opt out of billing for these services. Phoneco is part of the scam, because they get their percentage off of the billing, too. No incentive at all to let customers know this is happening.

Government is no use - I reported it to the utilities commission, and their take was, heck, you got your money back - case closed.

It's worse then you think.....

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/06/08/two-14-year-old-code-crackers-hack-winnipeg-atm

"All somebody needs to debit a bunch of money from your account is your account number and the bank routing number. "---Amy

The routing number and account number is also found on every check you write. We all still write checks, right ? Occasionally ? It is frightening to imagine that the recipient of any check you write can get account and routing numbers and become a potential thief.

It would be a hassle, but you could have sued the county for conversion.

It would be a hassle, but you could have sued the county for conversion.

Posted by: Bill O Rights at June 10, 2014 12:23 PM

You need to have damages. She got the money back, probably minus the five cents in interest it would have earned, while the county had possession of it.

Even for legitimate bills there is a huge room for error. AT&T once pulled the wrong amount from my mom. The check clearly stated $95.00. The pulled $950.00. They wouldn't give the money back until she threatened to sue them.

This is why I rarely (if ever) allow any company to automatically take money from my account. I go onto my banking website and initiate the electronic payments.

I don't trust those suckers, especially the phone and cable company.