Take Steps to Protect Your Info

I fortunately have an account that can be a throw away account and it happens to be the same one I used for taxes the past few years. Honestly though, if there are any reversals or claw backs, it doesn’t really matter if they have your account number or not. If they use legal methods at their disposal, they’ll get the banks (and yes, the credit unions too) to comply with reversals. If they can do it to the state of NY they can do it to you. I highly doubt they would go after all of us on this sort of scale, that is truly expensive and cannot be done purely by AI. I’ve been wondering if there is some sort of quantitative data they’re looking for, who’s claiming what, who have dependents, who are claiming specific tax credits, can they leverage data for blackmail on segments of the population (ie Sheryl Crow said something mean on twitter, let’s threaten exposure of her data until she retracts it)

Thanks for the feedback, Barbara. I like the idea of a “throw away account” where I can keep a minimum (just enough to avoid fees), and see what happens. And, of course, they have our social security numbers and opening a new account requires giving that information to the bank, so if someone with my info is intent on vacuuming out my accounts, it won’t be harder to grab from multiple accounts vs. one.

Still, I decided to move the majority of my money to a different bank; one with a local branch in a town only half an hour away instead of an hour plus. Living rural has a variety of challenges.