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Possible cell phone hack......

Below Average Joe

Below Average Joe

New member
Yesterday afternoon when I got home from work, my wife said that her phone was acting weird. It had no service and was trying to update things that didn't need updated, and saying that her email was not synced. She has never accessed her email from her phone so it makes me wonder. After telling me this, I look at my phone and it is doing the same things. I thought maybe Verizon is having issues since both of our phones are acting up, but none of our friends who have Verizon as a carrier had the issues. Now this morning I get an email notification from Chase that there are possible fraudulent charges on my card. The charges appear to be bogus since they are from Florida (I'm in Ohio) and there are no purchases on my card from me with that amount.

My question is this, is there a way to check if the phones were in fact hacked? Is there a way to protect the phones? We have AVG, but not sure if that protects from this type of thing. I am not knowledgeable in this area so any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks
 


That sucks. I found the best way to protect myself is to not have a phone at all, except a cheap pre paid phone for trips and emergencies. I sincerely hope you get it straightened out.
 
Android? iPhone?

Do you and your wife have the same model of phone? and/or do any of your friends have that model too?

I only ask because when carriers release a new update for phones, it frequently only screws up certain models.

Was this credit card you mentioned linked with an account on your phone? Gmail?

My first guess is that it's just a coincidence. In my experience, phones don't get infected very often. Malware/Viruses are pretty rare, unless you're downloading apps from shady locations.

It is possible that you got a keylogger of some sort that recorded your passwords and other info. Usually if it's going to do that, its not going to cause problems that could alert you to its presence.

Without seeing it first-hand I couldn't say anything for sure though.

I run Avast and Malwarebytes on my phone, but I don't know if they actually do anything. They're not hurting anything so I leave them just in-case.

Whatever the case, change all your passwords immediately. Don't just add a 1 on the end or capitalize a letter in the same password like most people do. Make it a completely different password if you can. Numbers and special characters are good too, but really for a secure password, just make it as long as you can. You could use a phrase or even better, a bunch of random words that only have meaning to you.
 
It's an android LG G2. My mom has the same phone as we are all on the same plan. Her phone did not have anything going on, acted normal. The card is linked to my Amazon account. The card is an Amazon card from Chase. My wife also got a text about winning a trip to the Bahamas. We just deleted the message. Just strange that it all happened to our phones and not my moms, and that I have fraudulent charges the next morning.
 
Were the purchases at a WalMart? I only ask because the last time our card number got stolen, Chase contacted us about purchases made in a Walmart in Tampa the same time we were buying lunch at a Subway outside of Columbus...

Could be a coincidence with the phones though...
 


Your moms phone being fine probably rules out the bad update theory.

Do you download apps from the amazon app store? Are there any apps that you and your wife both got recently?
 
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