How Almost Getting Scammed Taught Me The Power Of Questions
And Might Questions Be The Antidote To Fear?
Dear Friends,
Today I’m sharing a piece from the archives. It’s not about Torah per say, but you’ll see by the end, of course it is. I wrote the following essay in early November after what was almost the day I lost my identity and definitely the day I took a hit to my dignity. Throughout my writings here at Turn It, Turn It, I have made very clear that asking questions is a Jewish value. I have written about how sometimes the question is more important than the answer. The question is the source of strength. The following recounts the day I truly understood the power of questions.
Written November 2, 2022
Today I learned a very valuable lesson about fear. And questions. The kind of lesson you can truly only learn from experiencing, not reading about. Yet, here I am, going to try to teach you what I learned.
It started this morning with a phone call from an unknown number. I picked up the phone (which I normally don’t do anymore) because I figured, why not? Maybe it was someone I knew or someone calling for work purposes. Who knows?
On the other end of the call was someone telling me that there had been an unauthorized purchase from my Amazon account. Why would Amazon call? Does Amazon even have a phone number? First read flag. But, this has happened before–unauthorized charges–and so I wasn’t super surprised. And maybe I was tired or particularly vulnerable and so if anything, I appreciated the call. But this was when it got interesting. They told me that my account had been accessed from multiple locations throughout the USA and was possibly the victim of an identity breach. I was hooked.
Now, having my identity stolen has been one of my worst fears since I learned about what a credit score even was. First, I hate dealing with bureaucracy more than anything and it sounds like a lot of that. Second, I hate feeling out of control (who doesn’t). And third, it’s identity theft.
Immediately, my heart started pumping, adrenaline was flowing and I was afraid. Afraid of how this would affect me and my wife. Stressed about how long this call would take and what meetings I needed to reschedule. I stayed on the line as they gathered more information and asked questions about how this might have happened. It was simple enough. Have I lost my wallet recently? No. Is there anyone I know who might be suspected of wanting to do this to me? No. Do I access my bank on a mobile device that is powered by public wifi. Yes. Well, didn’t I know that that makes me vulnerable to identity theft? I had known this and started to feel stupid – why had I let my guard down? But who doesn’t use public wifi for all sorts of things?! Then they asked, has your information even been exposed in a more public breach. Actually, it had, through another party that we trust that experienced a bad cyber attack.
All of this added up and I was like, yeah, that makes sense, my identity probably was stolen. Even though I didn’t see anything strange going on with my bank accounts, I figured I didn’t understand some bank technology thing. I felt like they had more information than I did–that I should have known better about something. I felt embarrassed and frustrated and anxious and upset and scared. And they sounded like they could help me fix this—that they were on my side.
They told me they would transfer to the Federal Trade Commission. Another huge red flag. I should have paused there and been like, really? What? But my stress response was in full swing and I figured, great, this is so helpful. They told me about how they would do an investigation into the attack so it didn’t happen to anyone in the future. They wanted more information so they could move quickly. They told me they would try and track down whoever was behind this. Great. I wanted that too–we were on the same team! Seemed reasonable. Until it didn’t. You can see where this is going.
Finally, they started asking me to transfer money between my accounts as a way of protecting other accounts from the possible breach. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was willing to do so. Again, maybe they understood something I didn’t? They sounded like the experts. Luckily, my financial institutions have enough checks that this would not have happened immediately. Their voices were getting more and more urgent. I was asking them to slow down but also feared that we needed to act fast before this bad guy could take my money. And then, suddenly, it clicked. This wasn’t real. The government doesn’t work this way. No one gets on the phone with the FTC. If that’s how the government worked, I wouldn’t hate bureaucracy so much. I was being scammed.
We started asking questions: wait, why are we doing this? How does this work? Where is the process ultimately going? They started yelling at us to cooperate with the government. That there is a system and if we just listen then we won’t get in trouble. In trouble? I thought I was the victim here?! The things they were asking were totally arbitrary. Transfer $X into this account. Why?
But then they went way over the top. They said I was the lead suspect in a money laundering scheme and our phone call was being recorded as evidence for my defense. If I followed their protocol, I would be okay and we could clearly make the case in a court of law that I wasn’t at fault. What the actual f***? From an Amazon account hack to money laundering and threatened jail time? I started to panic. My mouth tasted all metallic and my breathing turned shallow and rapid. I needed to hang up. This wasn’t real. I hung up. They kept calling back. And back. And back.
Holy sh*t, what had I told them? Why had I trusted them?! I racked my brain–the call had been almost 2 hours. It started when I was still waking up for my day. Why was I so trusting and accommodating?! Did I need to revisit my theory of human nature? How could I be so stupid?!!! And the worst part–would my wife be ashamed or disappointed in me? Would this ruin relationships or how people saw me? How did I see myself?
I felt intellectually and emotionally violated. Like I’d been possessed. I didn’t recognize myself.
We alerted my bank and closed down everything just to be safe. Considered withdrawing all of our money, digging a hole, burying it, and guarding it with highly trained raccoons. We still might.
After taking many deep breaths, eating some lunch, shaking my body, and asking for heaps of validating and loving remarks from my family, I realized this entire psychological battle was being waged with one weapon. Fear.
My fear became their tool–I turned against myself. My fear turned off my thinking brain–the one that is now pouring over what happened and seeing all the red flags so obviously bright and alarming. At the time, I noticed them but dismissed them as minor hiccups in the quest to protect myself. Protect myself at all costs–even the most paradoxical cost. Cut off your arm to stop the bleeding! If you say so!
I’ve known for years that fear clouds judgment. I’ve lived with versions of anxiety since I was a little kid and have come a long way in dealing with those manifestations in my daily life. But this was different. This was like one giant dose, like I got to experience brainwashing from the front row. Rather, I was the one on stage.
Here comes the part about this being related to Torah. The scam started to fall apart as soon as we started asking questions. Wait, what are you saying? Can you repeat that part again? Why? What is the entire process you are asking us to go through? How does it work? As we asked questions, we felt more empowered. As we asked questions, we started loosening the grip my fear had taken and started trusting ourselves.
Could it be that questions are the antidote of fear?
I’m not going to pretend all of my fear went away – I’m still shaking a little now as I may for some time. Fear lodges itself in our bodies and needs to be wiggled out–it is physiological as much as emotional. But questions are like arrows in our quiver that we can use to puncture the bloated lies anxiety tells us. Questions are our tools. They are signs of our agency.
Rabbi Steven Greenberg writes, “There is great hope in a tradition that loves good questions even more than good answers.”
What if we saw questions as signs of hope? Seeking to understand. What if instead of fearing and clouding our brains and turning ourselves against our better judgment (and one another) we asked? We unhooked the chokehold fear has on us and finally breathed deeply and saw clearly? Saw our problems clearly. Saw each other clearly.
What questions do you need to ask? As a society, what questions aren’t we asking? Why aren’t we asking them out loud?
Today I got a huge serving of humble pie. Even though I consider myself quick-witted, I too can be infected with the fantastically potent distortions of fear. We all can. I’m trying to be kind to myself.
I was also reminded that I have an endless supply of questions by my side at all times. What isn’t making sense? Ask. What do I want to learn more about? Ask. Take a deep breath and question.
If anything, this is just the push I needed to delete my Amazon account.