hello and happy Cyber Monday to all…LOL. I received an email about a Walmart order I did not make. The order was confirmed and then subsequently canceled by Walmart, due to suspicious activity. I looked at the details and it listed a ship to name and address. I looked up that person and they seem to work in a profession that is related to the equipment placed in the order. Do I need to do anything about this? Does Walmart report these things to the police or is that just wishful thinking?
I get those emails all the time. Send to my junk folder and delete.
I don’t even open them because I know where I’ve placed orders.
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I had something very similar happen, about 3 years ago. I got an email confirming my Walmart order (I do have an online account with them, but I can’t remember when I last used it). I logged in and could see the order. The delivery address was several states away, and I didn’t recognize the payment method (not one of my credit cards). I tried to cancel it but it was too late. I immediately changed my password and removed any saved credit cards.
Then I started looking more closely. The delivery address was an elementary school, and I was able to find “contact us” information for a couple of the office staff. I emailed them a “this is going to sound odd, but…” message and someone did get back to me. Turns out a teacher there really did make the order, and paid with his own paypal account. I never had anything like that happen before or since.
I have to wonder if there’s some kind of bug in Walmart’s system that’s somehow attaching orders to an incorrect account. So maybe not fraud but just some kind of error in their system?
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That is an interesting thought. I logged in to my account lo and behold, there was a new payment method attached to it, with the name of the person made the order. I deleted it (along with any of the saved ones in there with my name/info).
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Change your password.
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I would change my password, and probably delete the account. If I needed it again, I’d simply start anew.
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There are at least two potential frauds that are possible.
One is that someone might try to order from your account using your credit card and ship to their address. Alternately they might ship to a third address where they will be able to steal the merchandise before the person living there can notice. You might want to change your password.
A more common fraud is that the entire email or text message is a fake. They want you to use your legitimate credentials to log into their fake system. When you log onto their fake system they will then tell you that everything is okay, but now they have your credentials, which allows the to pull off the first fraud.
I think that I agree with @Mjkacmom. I would change my password.
Also, I use different passwords for every account. That way if one password is compromised, they do not know how to break into any of my other accounts. This does require writing down the passwords somewhere, but my physical home is in quite a safe area.
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Or simply let your browser (Safari or Chrome) remember your password. It can generate a complex, hard-to-crack unique password for each website and stores it for you so you don’t have to. You only need to remember one master password.
I’ve switched to doing this for the past 2 years and it has saved me a lot of headache.
This. I get emails about my Amazon orders, Walmart orders, Kohls orders. I don’t have accounts with any. I also get PayPal things…and I don’t have a PayPal account at all.
Yes, i’ve gotten the fake ones countless times. This one was real - got a text alert and email. Logged in to the account to see the purchase history (including cancellation). Looked at the wallet area to see a credit card with the name of the order recipient stored in there. I deleted everything and changed my password.
Which sounds like it’s not just a fake email, “phishing” for your attention - but possibly truly a misuse of your Walmart account.
Without clicking on any links, access the Walmart site directly and change the login.
(Hm…, if Walmart detected suspicious activity, I would have expected for them to have reset your account password and force you to set up a new one with 2-factor identification in place.)
Highly unlikely, as local departments have no resources to chase after this.
My daughter had received an unwanted credit card last year - and once we started looking into it, we were able to shut down a whole identity theft attempt at the start by quickly locking down credit inquiries with all 3 agencies, and locking down account openings through the banking system’s ChexSystems.
This prevented account openings (with cheques and credit cards being ordered) at two different institutions.
I got a call this morning ‘to confirm my order.’ Press 1 for more info. That was it. No company, no item ordered, no amount. Very weird.
Likely a poorly executed robo-call, where the system started running the script too early, and you just heard whatever tail-end.