Any reason to be cautious of giving personal info to corporate fraud departments?
I can't address the psychology of trust involved in your question, but here are some common sense guidelines for dealing with your issue. Make sure you know who you are talking to.  Call the company you need to speak to via a publicly available phone number. An email or something you got in a letter might be from a different source.  If you use a website, you should be sure you are on the correct website. Keep careful records.  Make good notes of each phone call and keep all emails and letters forever. Note the time, name and/or ID of the person you spoke to and numbers called in addition to keeping notes on what actions should be done.  Keep your faxing transmission receipts and shipping tracking numbers too. If you are nervous, ask them why they want the info.  The fraud department should be able to explain it to you.  For example, they probably want your social because that is how your credit report is identified.  If they are going to fix a credit report, they will need a social.  It is doubtful they would have a good explanation why they need your mother's maiden name. Ask for secure transmission, or confirm they have it.  Postal mail isn't so secure, but I'll go out on a limb and say most fax machines today are not really fax machines, but software that deals in PDFs.  At some point you will have to realize you will have to transmit something.  No method is perfect, but you can limit your exposure. Help them do their jobs.  If you are (understandably) nervous, consider their motivations: corporate profit.  BUT that could very well mean not running afoul of the law and (with any luck) treating customers the best way they know to earn business.  If you stymy the fraud department, how can they help you? If the ID theft was serious enough, document your issue for future law enforcement so you getting pulled over for speeding doesn't result in you going to jail for whatever crime the other person did.  Perhaps the fraud department you are dealing with can assist there. Finally, while you work with fraud departments to clear up your name and account, work on the other end to limit future damage.  Freeze your credit.  See if you bank or credit card have monitoring.  Use CreditKarma.com or a similar if you cannot find a free service.  (Please don't ever pay for credit monitoring.)
You are describing a corporation.  You can set up a corporation to perform business, but if you were using the money for any personal reasons the courts could Pierce the corporate veil and hold you personally liable.  Also, setting up a corporation for purely personal reasons is fraud. When an someone as esteemed and smart as Donald Knuth tells you the chequing system is busted it's time to close your cheque account, or I guess live with the associated risk. Answer to question, yes your account information can be used to commit fraud on you via your bank. I think that the person that stole the wallet is up for the credit cards and stuff with money but less likely he/she will be smart enough too use your identity, and even if they do you'll find out somehow now or later! "As long as there is nothing more to this story you aren't sharing, you can expect those bills you paid to come back (you will have to pay them again later). You can be pretty certain that the name he gave you was fake, and that the bank account you paid your bills with was not his. I would not try to do anything at all with the information he gave you because first it is not his, and second your name is already tied to this bank account via your utility bills. In other words that would be illegal and you are already on the list of suspects.   I would say that if you don't call the police they probably won't call you. The police often times do not even waste their time when somebody's light bill was paid with fraudulent financial information or whatever. I have actually seen similar situations play out a number of times and the police have never gotten involved. Disclaimer: I probably don't live where you live, and I'm not an attorney.  But I do know what I am talking about so here's my advice (I know you didn't ask for advice but you probably might benefit from it). Let that money go, sometimes people get you. Take it as a lesson and move on.  If you do end up having to have contact with the police and you don't already know, they will lie to you and try to trick you into acting in a way that is not in your self interest. But then you kind of look guilty if you won't even talk to them, and in this case you did not do anything illegal. So if I was you I would probably just think of where I might be incriminating myself by telling the truth, if there were any parts of my story that would raise any flags, and think of how I would smooth those out ahead of time.   Also for your personal information you do not need to have a sophisticated understanding of computers to do anything you described, if you are familiar with operating a web browser you can do all types of stuff with Paypal. Most people that give off the vibe ""criminal"" are not going to be able to make any money conning people and would probably have given it up before they got to you. The information you have is not like the most valuable stuff ever but somebody that knew what they were doing could use it to take money out of your account, and if they had that and then could get a few other pieces they could really mess up  your life. So that's part of why they say to be careful, any one piece is maybe not so valuable but if you are loose with everything you will probably have a shitty few weeks at some points in the future. ""no aa"" lol" It's very, very unlikely that you received a phone call at work with an incorrect birth date from an actual lending company that thinks it loaned you any money.  It's much more likely that you received a phone call at work from a collections agency that would have bought some loan from the aforementioned agency for pennies on the dollar.  They would have been hunting around trying to find someone with your name who was born thirteen years earlier.  It's even more likely that this is some sort of phishing scam.  If you're worried, you can check your credit rating, but it is likely that you can safely ignore the situation.  If they call back, ask for thorough details about the credit card.  If they're a real collections agency and for some reason they won't leave you alone, IIRC the most surefire course of action is to hire a lawyer to send them a cease-and-desist letter. "Here are a handful of measures I take myself: I check my credit reports once in a while and look for anything out of the ordinary. If somebody calls me on the telephone claiming to be from my bank or credit card company, utility, etc. I ask for their number, check it, and call them back.  I don't give personal information to people merely claiming to be from a place I do business with. I never fill out ballots for free contests.  Most of the time these are scams.  When I get a call telling me ""you won a free cruise"" for a ballot I supposedly filled out at the mall, I say they're lying through their teeth.  For excitement, I'll sometimes buy a lotto ticket instead. I'm careful when I surf the web.  I don't give my personal information to web sites I can't trust.  If they look the least bit shady, I'm out.  Also, I use different passwords at different web sites.  I avoid using a password from a public terminal, but when I must, I change my password soon after. I'm careful when I download software.  I don't install anything I didn't get from a trusted source.  I pay for software when necessary, so finding a trusted source is not hard.  But, I've heard of people who – to save a buck – would download a pirated application from a shady warez site only to be ""gifted"" a trojan horse key logging or other spyware along with it. When I no longer need a bill, receipt, statement, etc. or any document containing personal information, I shred it, and I use a shredder that does a micro-cut, not just a strip- or cross-cut.  The micro-cut remains go in the green bin with wet and yucky organic waste. When I no longer need a hard drive, I use a secure wiping tool like Darik's Boot & Nuke before reusing.  If the drive isn't worth reusing, I'll wipe first then take apart with my Torx screwdriver.  Once I have the drive platter, I scratch the heck out of it.  Remains go to the community recycling depot. That's all I can think of right now; I probably missed a few :-) So, what do others do?  I'm curious, too." All the items listed are required for International Wire transfer. In wrong hands this info along with other info can cause issues. Most of the times you trust the person with this info and hence is less cause to worry. So the key is if you don't trust, don't give the details. Use alternatives like; Best open an account for receiving funds. Share the details, once the funds are received move it to an account where the details have not been shared. Alternatively paypal or other such services can help. Yes, but note that some credit card companies let you create virtual cards--you can define how much money is on them and how long they last.  If you're worried about a site you can use such a card to make the payment, then get rid of the virtual number so nobody can do dirty deeds with it. In practice, however, companies that do this are going to get stomped on hard by the credit card companies--other than outright scams it basically does not happen.  (Hacking is another matter--just pick up the newspaper.  It's not exactly unusual to read of hackers getting access to credit card information that they weren't supposed to have access to in the first place.) So long as you deal with a company that's been around for a while the risk is trivial. Usually the most significant risk scenarios here are: Third parties can abuse your routing/account numbers to initiate debits, but this is a type of fraud that is easily traced. It can happen, but it is more likely that it would be a scenario where you were specifically targeted vs. the victim of some random fraud. Defending against someone who is specifically going after you is very difficult, especially if you don't know about it. Your SSN isnt used for the bank transfer, you are providing it so that the entity making the payments can report on payments to you for tax purposes. If you are truly worried about this type of scenario, I suggest setting up a dedicated savings account for the purpose of receiving these payments and then sweeping (either manually or automatically) the funds into another account. Most stock brokers will allow you to automate this, and most banks will let you do this manually. "Every legitimate claim I've filed regarding fraudulent charges on my card includes signing a legal document. If your ""friend"" completes such a document and you can verify that it is untrue, he's in deeper trouble than you. Unfortunately, if he's successful in filing a claim that is later proven to be fraudulent, it puts your account in a poor status until it's fully cleared. Even then, corporate inertia may result in longer duration inaccurate information.  Once you've cleared the fraudulent claim, you'll want to contact your credit agency to ensure they are provided with correct and proper documentation." "It's anonymous/automated. They don't know who you are, just that customer x1a bought y. If your name isnt given to employees ""your"" privacy isnt being volated because the dont know its ""you.""  I imagine the government justifies their intrusions on our digital privacy the same way." You don't have to provide your personal home address per se. You can provide a legal address where Companies house can send across paper correspondence to. Companies house legally requires an address because directors are liable to their shareholders(even if you are the only shareholder) and to stop them from disappearing just like that with shareholder's money. Moreover your birth date will also be visible on websites which provide comapnies information. You can ask these websites to stop sharing your personal information. Every company must have a registered office within the UK which is the official legal address of the company. It must be a physical address (i.e. not a PO Box without a physical location) as Companies House will use this address to send correspondence to. To incorporate a private limited company you need at least one director, who has to be over 16 years of age. You may also have a secretary, but this is optional. The information you will need to supply for each officer includes: You may also have officers that are companies or firms, and for these you will need to supply the company or firm name, its registered office address, details of the legal form of the company, where it is registered and if applicable its registration number. "Others have already commented on the impact of anything which dissuades merchants from raising possible breaches, so I won't dwell on that. Maybe we need stronger legislation, maybe we don't, but it doesn't change today's answer. Often it works the other way around to what you might expect - rather than the merchant noticing and notifying Visa/MC/others, Visa/MC/others spot patterns of suspicious activity (example 1). I don't have any data on the relative numbers of who is being notified/notifying between merchants and payment processors, but at the point when your card is identified as compromised there's no reason to suppose that an individual merchant in the traditional sense has been compromised, let alone identified. In fact because there's a fast moving investigation it could even be a false alarm that led to your card getting cancelled. Conversely it could be a hugely complex multinational investigation which would be jeopardised. It's simply not safe to assume that simply ""brand X"" has been compromised, therefore everything ""brand X"" knows about you is also compromised: Furthermore there's no reason to assume the merchant has even admitted to, or discovered the root cause. MC/Visa/Banks, at the point at which they're cancelling cards simply can't say (at least not in a way that might expensively backfire involving lots of lawyers) because the standard of proof needed to go on record blaming someone is simply not yet met. So: yes it's common that you aren't told anything for all of the above reasons. And of course if you really want to find out more you may have some success with your local data protection legislation and formally make a subject access request (or local equivalent) to see what that brings back. Be sure to do it in writing, to the official address of both mastercard and your bank." Probably because large chains can absorb the loss from fraud better than small stores do.  Thus, small stores want to ensure that the person holding the card is the same as the name on the card. So could someone working at your bank directly.  Of at your HR department at work.  Most of the wait staff at the restaurant I ate at technically had access to my credit card and could steal money.  While you are at work, someone could break into your house and steal your stuff too. The point is, Mint and everything else is a matter of the evaluating the risk.  Since you already understand the vulnerability (they have your accounts) and you know the risk (they could steal your money) what are the chances it happens? 1.)  Mint will make lots more money if it doesn't happen, so it benefits Intuit to pay their employees well and put in safeguards to prevent theft.  Mint.com is on your side even if a specific employee isn't. 2.)  You have statements and such, so you can independently evaluate mint.  I do not just trust mint with my stuff, I check info in Quicken and at the bank sites themselves.  I don't do them all equally, but I will catch problems. 3.)  Laws mean that if theft happens, you will have the opportunity to be made whole. If you are worried about theft, don't trust other people or generally get a bad feeling, don't do it.  If you check your accounts online with the same computer you log into Facebook with, them I would suggest it doesn't bother you.  You might have legal or business reasons to be more adverse to risk then me. However, just because somebody could steal your money, I personally don't consider it an acceptable risk compared to the reward. I will also be one of the first people to be robbed, I am not unrealistic.