The story

I had fraudulent charges submitted against my debit card at a restaurant over 1000 miles from where I live. Fortunately, thanks to constant notifications and being diligent with my account checking, I noticed it immediately. I notified the local restaurant where the fraud took place, that in turn notified the local police. The police attempted to locate the suspect but were unable to do so due to a criminal using a “burner” phone and having the food delivered to the office in an apartment complex.

Fortunately, I easily proved it was a fraud, and my bank refunded the money. However, it still wasted several hours of my time, and likewise, I had to wait a couple of weeks to be refunded the money. At this stage in my life, that was not a major issue for me; however, in my younger / broke days, it would have had a much larger impact on my financial well-being.

Another shorter story. In my younger days, I was a big fan of World of Warcraft, like many. I also liked using Curse for add-ons to enhance my game-play. Using Curse, I downloaded a keylogger that was not yet known to antivirus programs at the time, and they hacked my WoW account, selling all my goods and draining my account.

Fortunately, tech support at Blizzard reverted everything back on my player to its pre-hack status, but again much like the above scenario, it wasted a lot of time and effort proving the hack. Likewise, it certainly made me feel less secure with downloading add-ons as I had never been hacked prior to this. You certainly get a sense of being violated when someone steals your personal credentials.