A highly savvy Mac/computer consultant recently reported that her Skype account was suspended when Skype determined that it was probably hacked. Someone had gained access and was making calls to Asia.
The great news:
1) Skype monitors and was suspicious, suspending the account
2) her damages, her financial loss, was limited to $11
3) via chat with Skype customer service she was able to get it back up and running.
Why her Skype loss was limited to $11.
Thanks for that minimum loss go to Allison Sheridan, the fantastic woman of Nosillacast podcast — and I now share that thanks here and I have a feeling many of you will join me in thanking Allison.
A while back Allison’s Skype account hacked and she lost a few hundred dollars! Unfortunately, Allison had a DEFAULT SETTING ON — having Skype automatically reload her account via her payment method when the balance falls below a certain amount. The default is $2.
Fortunately for Pat, Allison had shared her lesson with her listeners recommending they all turn off that setting, so Pat’s reload setting was off and once her balance was used up, no more loss was suffered.
Pat’s advice:
If you have ever paid to make calls to landlines, for example, with Skype – take heed, log in, check that your setting is NOT to automatically reload.
Note – when you add credit to Skype, there is a little check box indicating that you want to auto-reload. I even unchecked, left the page and it was rechecked when I came back to it. Watch out for those pesky little check boxes!
If you only use your Skype account with other Skype users and thus, have never given them any payment method), you don’t have to worry about this. But once you make a payment to Skype, be sure to turn off that automatic reload option!
Please bear in mind that these two women are highly intelligent and tech savvy people. If this happened to them, it can happen to you!