Getting weird scam letters or emails from banks I don't use
People are receiving physical letters and emails from unfamiliar financial companies and banks claiming missed payments or unknown inquiries using outdated personal information. This causes immediate panic and forces people to spend hours trying to figure out if their information has been compromised or if it is just a phishing scam.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Calling the bank using an independent, official phone number to verify if the letter is legitimate
- 2Checking credit history and financial accounts for unauthorized activity
- 3Placing fraud alerts or credit freezes
- 4Reporting suspicious correspondence to postal authorities
- 5Checking credit reports on annualcreditreport.com
- 6Freezing credit with major bureaus
- 7Blocking the sender and reporting the message as spam
- 8Searching online or coming to Reddit to see if others received the same email
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I received a mysterious (physical) letter a few weeks ago, ostensibly from my bank (B of A).”source ↗
“I got a similar letter from another bank.”source ↗
“Has anyone received an email from a company called OPPLOANS? I received one today saying I missed a payment. I am pretty sure it is a scam as I have never heard of this company before. But I can't rule out someone using my information either.”source ↗
“I got one this morning too and it freaked me out. Ive been trying all morning to figure out what's going on.”source ↗
“I just got one saying my automatic payments have stopped bc returned payments but I've never heard of them either.”source ↗
“At least it’s not just me. I don’t even have any loans”source ↗
“I just got an email too and I'm like nope I don't have a loan with these people so I searched if it was scam and seeing u guys it definitely is.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3How to tell if a BEC attack was caught automatically or by a human
- 4Why does IT send fake phishing emails that stress us out?
- 2Automated notification emails only show IDs instead of client names
- 2Why do self-hosted emails keep going to spam?
- 5Seller gave me a fake tracking number with a thank you card
- 2Why are sellers putting religious scripture in package deliveries?