At around 11:12 pm last night, I got an SMS regarding some transaction on my credit card. I just happened to notice it as I was looking at my phone at that time. Thankfully I was awake, so I was able to notice the message immediately else it would have been a problem had it been a regular day but due to this lock down, I was up that late.
As I told my husband about it, I got an alert of another transaction. We both were like, “The credit card has got hacked!!!”
Let me go back a few days....the ugly corona virus confined everybody indoors and forced the schools to shut. Every school had to look forward to ways and means to keep the classes going. Amidst this crises, Zoom app suddenly started gaining popularity and became a common platform for all meetings. It began being used widely until few days ago, multiple posts about privacy issues started surfacing. I tried to reason with the concerned people about data theft being a real threat but it was not taken into consideration and so it just went on. All this while, my husband and me were ill at ease about this and he would often ask me to put my foot down but I showed reluctance in taking it head on.
Yesterday morning, I did put my point across once again, citing data privacy concerns. Ironically, the same data theft that I was trying to caution about, stared right into my face that same night. One after the other, unauthorized transactions started taking place.
I immediately called the bank's credit card department to block the card but due to Covid issue, my call went on unanswered for 15 minutes. Meanwhile another alert came. I was going berserk, so I decided to login to my netbanking to hotlist the card. Managed to do so but still wanted confirmation about it and also wanted to know if anymore transactions had taken place. For over 1 hour I kept calling them but the auto tape continuously kept telling that all customer care executives were busy. Majorly traumatic it was.
Meanwhile my husband uninstalled Zoom app from my laptop as we were strongly suspicious about it giving remote access to my laptop. Eventually we changed passwords for our email and banking accounts.
Today morning called up customer care again but to no avail. So then called my relationship manager who got me connected and had me sent a dispute form and confirmed that 2 more transactions had happened of which I wasn’t even aware as I had not received any alert for those. The card was confirmed as being blocked and I filled the dispute form, scanned and mailed it to the Credit Card team. Hoping for things to be sorted on that front.
My school online classes still run on Zoom but I told the Principal that I wouldn’t be using it any further. You see, I finally did put my foot down. It wasn't well received and advocacy of the application took place, but me being me, I flatly said NO means NO in this case!
So all of you who are reading this- Don’t use Zoom. Uninstall it. The transactions made were all outside India on Play Store. Best part is all of us at home use Apple phones, no android so we don’t have play store. Just hoping, this post helps prevent people from falling prey to hackers and saves you all from online data theft. Stay safe people!
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