Switched all my credit and banking notifications back to paper

[LuvOrlando]

Do people think their email is secure nowadays or no?

Used to be it was hacked to be disruptive but that seems to have changed, people don't seem to have things crash so often anymore but I doubt the problem went away. Now I feel like everything is hacked all the time out of sheer nosiness and info is just pulled for who knows what weirdo reason. Why do I think this, because my junkmail email account of hotmail makes me authenticate through GMAIL all the time, so they apparently have absolutely no faith in their own product which is both funny and scary. I just had to do it again and thought, that's it I'm switching, it'll be annoying but so be it, I get the creeps from the lack of privacy.

As I tried to switch it seems the banks don't want paper but I'm even willing to pay the fee because at this point it seems like the LEAST private means of communication is email and on top of that, banks now dump every teeny tiny detail into email now. It used to be there were prompts to go check my accounts and now every single detail of every single transaction is documented and dumped into the email. Maybe I don't want anyone with access to hacking into my email to know how much we have to drop into bills. Even grocery stores do it and I can see my shopping lists, what is the reason for that being emailed when I got a receipt at the register?

Life in 2025 is just so odd, I miss an analog life.

 

[sam_gordon]

So you're worried about someone reading your email and seeing the banking information in the attachment. But have no problem with paper statements possibly getting lost or stolen en route to you?

We don't get any statements emailed. At most we get a "your statement is ready". Maybe that's a choice for you?

It's been about 15-20 years, but one of the times we had our identity stolen, the thief had taken our bill payments out of our mailbox (outgoing). That's back when you still wrote checks for everything. They then used the info on the checks, ordered their own, and went on a shopping spree. After that we started putting our outgoing mail with our employers or dropping it directly into a post office drop box.

 

[gottalovepluto]

You just made your life so much less secure. Mail theft is common, as is lost mail, and both will put you at risk for identity theft far worse than PP had it. They can take a little bit of that personal info from bank statements, cc statements, match you with dark web data breach info from like a credit bureau hack (we were all hacked on that one) and they're off to the races. "But my box is locked" -our locked neighborhood box is constantly broken into. You go into your accounts online anyway to retrieve your statements, they're not emailed to you. And when you get a statement ready notification you are NEVER supposed to click on any links... honestly, you should look for some classes or something on staying safe online. I'm not being sarcastic or anything PLEASE FIND SOME. You lack basic understandings of how this stuff works. For instance, if you don't like targeted notices from stores or spend notices from banks, go into your online accounts and change your settings for notices and privacy. If you don't like the grocery store knowing exactly what you're going to buy and when quit using their frequent shopper program, that's how they learn about you.

Any who, if you insist paper is safer at least
1. Sign up for Informed Delivery so you can know when you're missing mail, do it right now if you haven't already, it's free
2. Get a PO Box for receiving your treasure trove of sensitive info. Some places insist on sending things to street addresses, but most will offer a mailing address option.
3. All of your email should be 2FA to lower your odds of the account itself actually being hacked*

*the point of hacking an email account is not to see how you spend your money, it is to reset your life's passwords so they can drain your accounts and open new ones, steal e-gift cards, and blackmail you if you were dumb enough to put something blackmailable in your email

 

[LuvOrlando]

I think the likelihood of the paper being stolen is among the lowest of my concerns in life.

Yes, I know it happens that paper mail gets robbed but someone would need to be very motivated to get to it and I just don't think we're all that interesting for that sort of devotion, not when its easy to steal card info out of someone's phone wallet by walking by. My phone wallet is empty because someone tried to steal info from my phone wallet in a Whole Foods years ago, wallet was empty but I got the prompt anyway and that was enough of a lesson for me.

Where we are our physical mail is in a locked box but honestly, it would be worth it to get a PO Box for $4-10 a month. I also switched all communications of purchases etc to text which is faster anyway compared to the clutter of email. On top of that I check our banking statements and credit cards every single day so I would probably catch a problem reasonably fast.

If I could opt our of the endless sharing of info I would do that since I go in every day but it seems everyone wants to endlessly push out info. I remember when I got a bill or a statement once a month, good times

 

[Kae]

Just because you went back to paper doesn't mean the stuff still isn't online

 

[china mom]

I just get an email saying that my statement is ready and I can go look at it online - and I ignore the email because I am in my banking all of the time so I don't really care about the statement.

 

[Dug720]

Where we are our physical mail is in a locked box

Sadly, it's not necessarily outsiders that are stealing mail. My dad often sends me cards, and there are times he puts a $2 bill in the card. Well, about a year ago, they stopped arriving. My informed delivery would show them, but they never made it to my mailbox. Literally anything card-shaped with my dad's handwriting on it never made it to my mailbox. The first time I chalked it up to going to the wrong building - not totally uncommon, and right around the corner is a house with the same number, so it happens from time to time that we get their mail so I assume sometimes they get ours. But it was consistently every card. That is just weird.

We tried having my mom address the cards and like one arrived, then same thing. Like someone in the sorting facility learned not only my dad's handwriting but the return address. There are always different carriers on my route, so I don't think it's them. And yes, I've filed multiple reports about it.

Halloween they put both my "Mom and Daddy" card and my "Daddy" card inside my Halloween box - which has a tracking number on it. They both arrived.

 

[tvguy]

Not sure ANYTHING is secure these days. I am currently covered by 4 different Credit monitoring services provided by 4 different companies that I have online accounts with whose systems were compromised.
One word of caution if you are doing things online, make sure your spouse/children/SOMEONE can figure out how to access those accounts if something happens to you. Yes, someone having your email password, account logins and passwords is a risk, but it is a NECESSARY risk.
My MIL passed away unexpectedly, and fortunately all of her bills all came in the mail, and my wife was on her bank accounts, so THAT was no a problem for us. But she was office manager for a small law firm that did all their financial transactions online, and NOBODY but my MIL had the logins and passwords. It took months for them to get access to everything. Literally to the point that nobody, including the lawyer got paid. The lawyer had to dip into her personal accounts to meet payroll.
Also, I paid all the bills in our household for 40 years. As much as my wife hates paying bills, we now alternate paying bills every month. If something happens to me, she knows how to do it. And if something happens to both of us, our kids know where to find our logins and passwords. Yup, that is a risk, but again, a necessary one.

 

[hardcorestitch]

Unfortunately everything in life carries a risk… even riding attractions at Disney has it too! You just need to be a bit more active in your protection. VPNs and security software are a start. Watching what you send and looking carefully at URLs are also important in any email!

 

[disykat]

We get most of our statements electronically. As pointed out above, we get a notice saying our statement is available and we then have to log on to see it. That seems much more secure than having the actual numbers sit in our mailbox.

That said, we also have a PO Box to protect exactly that issue. I still get some hard copies of things from some places despite making a concerted effort not to! It's so irritating, I go online and check and all the correct boxes are checked - electronic statements, my PO Box as the address, and STILL we sometimes get things in our street mailbox that have sensitive info. We have a locked box, but it isn't really secure.

I agree VPNs and security software are an important factor in keeping electronic data safe! We also have backup password info stored outside of our home (I'm back up for my siblings, and my adult kids are backup for us) and are in the process of putting things in an online vault and making sure kids will have access to that.