Vanguard recently rolled out a new “Security Score” that encourages folks to activate all of the various security features they have available, and included is a new feature called “Outgoing Transfer Lock”. This is an important and useful option that I think all Vanguard customers should activate immediately.
Background on ACAT transfer scams. Instead of hacking your Vanguard account directly, a thief will obtain enough of your personal information to open a new brokerage account somewhere else, say E*Trade, and then they will request an ACAT transfer of the entire contents of your existing brokerage account (ex. Vanguard) to that new fake E*Trade account which they control. At this point, they can quickly liquidate the account and send the money elsewhere. The key here is that they just need to be able to open an empty, new brokerage account in your name plus find your Fidelity account numbers from somewhere. They don’t need your Fidelity username and password (or pa...
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