I set aside the other morning to do some long overdue paperwork. I needed to pay some bills, make reservations for an upcoming trip and give the kids some spending money for the next week or so. The infuriating thing about college kids is that they like to eat. A lot. Sometimes they even want 3 meals a day. Unreasonable.
I do most of my banking on line. It is pretty convenient. Except when it isn't. I signed onto my bank account and instead of my bank balances popping up on the screen or limping onto the screen as it were, I got something else. This:
I have a long running battle with Citibank about the type of information they occasionally ask me for when I am logging onto their website. They will sometimes ask for my address, or my date of birth or the last 4 digits of my social security number. What drives me absolutely crazy is when they have asked me for my debit card number and my pin at the same time. Ask me for my debit card number and the last 4 of my SSN, ask me for my debit card number and my birth date or my mother's maiden name. But don't ask me in the same document to provide both my card number and the pin necessary to use it. I think it is just asking for trouble. It doesn't happen often but when it does, I always refuse and write a very strongly worded email to Citibank voicing my displeasure. I don't think this is providing additional security, this combination of information is asking for trouble. This has gone on for a few years. Like I said a long running battle, although I think it is more on my side than Citibank. I don't think they would lose any sleep over alienating me and losing the lucrative Wendy accounts. Not a wink.
So when I got this pop up, the first thing I thought was that the only items missing on this list were my height and weight. Then I thought "Citibank has gone too far" if they require this from me, I don't care we are moving our accounts. I was outraged. So I called and expressed my outrage. At first the customer service representative was apologetic, she could understand why I was upset and agreed that I should not have to provide this information. She was going to check with her security team and get right back to me. I was put on hold. For 12 minutes. Then she got back on the line and told me after conferring with the security team and the online banking representative, they concluded that I had some kind of virus or malware on my computer that generated this form. And I needed to get rid of it in order to access my accounts. And I should not access any of my financial accounts online until I was sure this "thing" was off my computer. And, thank you and have a good morning. WAIT!! Can't Citibank help me? No. Not their problem. Doesn't Citibank want a copy of what they are asking for so they can tell other customers?. No. Really? Really. They have no evidence that this is a problem with any other customer than me, I should contact my anti-virus software manufacturer and have a good day. Hmmm.
So I called my anti-virus company,McAfee. I expected good service. After all, I had just renewed my account for $79! After my agent "Leisl" (I kid you not) connected, I ran through the problem with her. We spent an agonizing 10 minutes spelling and re-spelling my name, my address, the city in which I live in (New York), my email address so she could determine I was actually a paying customer of McAfee. It was during this time, I figured out Leisl was not from Dusseldorf. After getting remote access to my computer, the first thing she did was run a program to determine if the software on my computer was functioning. After running the program she determined, or more accurately, the software determined that the other software on my computer was running correctly. She didn't run the anti-virus software, didn't run a scan, didn't do anything but run the program and accept its findings. It is like bringing your car into the shop complaining of the car not running well and the mechanic turns it on and says "it turns over, it's fine". So she was done. Could she help me with anything else? But wait, Citibank says I have a virus. You don't she said because the "is the anti-virus software working correctly" program says the anti-virus software is working correctly. So you can't have a virus. But how do we know that is working correctly? Having seen the pop up, it seems to me that this is not the work of Citibank (begrudgingly) and that I do have a virus. How do we explain that? She just repeated that the Virtual Technician software said we don't. So you are saying, we don't have a virus or malware or bot or trojan. She reassured me we did not, the software was working because the other software said so. Somehow, I am not reassured.
After Leisl and I said farewell, I decided to run a full scan on our computer to check for viruses with the recently renewed McAfee Software. I started the scan at about 1:00 p.m. my time. It took over 20 hours to complete. The result? I had a total of 80 files corrupted with viruses. 80! This is with McAfee's own software. So apparently the godly Virtual Technician software is infallible. After fixing 40 of the files, McAfee couldn't resolve the other problems. So I downloaded something for free from the Microsoft website. After running its scan, which took about 30 minutes to run, it identified 2 Trojans still on my computer infecting files. It removed the trojans and it is done. I can now get on the Citibank website without getting the pop-up and I feel pretty confident that I can pay bills and other such duties without subjecting myself to total financial ruin.
So during my 1+ day of dealing with this problem, I thought quite a bit about Trojans. Is there any kind of Trojan that is good? Football teams - uh nooooooo! Computer viruses - no! The only good kind of Trojan that I could come up with was the prophylactic kind. I just wish I had some kind of "sucker" prophylactic that worked when I was taking out my credit card to pay for the McAfee virus software, preventing me from separating from my money.
Auf wiedersehen. (And go Bruins!)
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