Of course if the employer sent it mostly pre-filled out, then the employer just handed the bad guy a bunch of info the bad guy may not have previously had. But has now, and from a reliable source.
Bad scenario no matter how it shakes out.
It seems like a form that has a bunch of personal information not filled out by the employee is not only a bad idea, but criminal. If they are filling out information that you didn’t provide, I believe that could be considered fraud. From what I can tell, there are very limited situations where that is okay. And the only information they can legally fill out is info they control; stuff like your income, hire date, employment status. Anything other personal information can’t be entered by them, even if they get it from their records.
Anyway, if they sent your info to a random stranger, get a lawyer. Their negligence caused serious financial risk and you are likely entitled to restitution for that.
Tell him that he should be surprised when it happens. It’s a huge red flag.
Our ground has been white for the past 2½ weeks; what do you know of “snow” & “blizzard” Mr. (south) Florida-dude*?
-* I’d call you Florida Man, but you’re not that bad! Close, but not quite there!
Your HR person is incompetent. I get several scam emails a day of employees supposedly wanting to change their banking info. HR should have contacted you a different way than email to verify: a phone call, an in-person okay, something. I’m just flabbergasted.
And your IT company should be sending out training lessons for the employees, along with periodic fake phishing emails to see if the employees click on unsafe links.
I can’t believe that I’m feeling grateful to my company for doing this.
That HR person is grossly incompetent, especially if they provided the scammer with even more personal information.
My company does this and they’re so transparent it’s laughable. It’s like they have no idea what we actually do and just send out PAaY widg3t InVoIcE NoW emails.
Then when we pass this stupid “test” the “Congratulations for being vigilent and not a fucking moron” pop up is super condescendingly worded.
And I’m not entirely sure but I think they send these out on the same day every month. I don’t track it, but it feels like it.
Go IT, Go!
Meanwhile our actual technical infrastructure is held together with duct tape and no one knows how anything works.
But their “Best Practice” checklists have all the boxes checked. 
Our company does it just the opposite. ALL external email come with a red text warning box, you know,
"This is from an external source, only click on links or download attachments from trusted sourcesThis includes from our trusted vendors, which is a significant portion of my email & many of them include links that I need to click on. This results in warning fatigue when I see it on 90% of my emails. Put a few vendors on white list (because, realistically, we believe we can trust them so if it was a bad link how would I know?) & then we’ll only get that red box when it matters.
Then, some of the monthly forced phishing attempts don’t have that box, which indicates that they are internal emails. I got dinged for one from some HR-related address about the company won some award (I guess that was the clue that it was fake!). They argued that I should have hovered my mouse over the senders name & I would be able to see it was fake; like if I do that for every one of the hundreds of emails I get a day I would never have time to do any work. My counter was that if we have someone inside creating fake emails accounts we have bigger problems than me clicking on a link from an internal email. Morons!
Hey, I take offence to that! Where I work it’s InfoSecurity who does that; blame IS, not IT! 
It’s all IT as far as I’m concerned.
We definitely get warning overload. Our American corporate overlords feel it’s incredibly important to tag our emails as “coming from Canada” which maybe makes sense for Americans to receive, but this is also true when us Canucks email each other and our Canadian customers.
Just…no thought put into it whatsoever. American-centric solutions for everyone, even outside the USA!
I love the work I do and like my immediate colleagues (mostly….) but pretty much loathe our parent company. It’s just so terrible in so many ways.
Our IT company just switched to a better scam-education company than the lame one they’d been using. Still very basic level, but it sounds like the HR person at Spice_Weasel’s company could have used some very basic education.
I’m not having a particularly happy day.
Now I am not an paraskevidekatriaphobiac, but I just realized it is, indeed, Friday the 13th.
I pit my cable ISP. Aside from the fact that they’re consistently a PITA to deal with and their customer support are a wretched collection of imbeciles, they’re shameless about raising their rates even though they’re supposed to be regulated.* I came across an old bill from a couple of years ago and their rates for internet and landline service have basically doubled! They also want me to subscribe to their mobile cell service and cable TV, which I will do just as soon as pigs fly through frozen hell.
* And they are regulated, and need to justify rate increases by showing increased costs. They are also accomplished liars.
I’m tired of all of the two factor identification crap. Everything has it now. Well except for seeing my medical history, I can just log in to that, but to pay my medical bills I have to login, get a passcode, then pay.
I travel quite a bit, especially to Europe and the Caribbean so I can’t always get texts to actually get the code. This screwed me a couple of years ago when I was in Greece, I got fraud emails so I tried to log in, and it told me I needed a passcode. That shut down my card. Luckily I was on my last day so it didn’t matter too much, but my other cards don’t like me being out of the country for some reason and will sometimes shut me down, even when I tell them where I will be.
And now my bank app makes me get a passcode every time I open it. Before it would remember me, but they changed something yesterday. Now in order for it to work properly I have to have a password, passcode, four digit PIN, and they keep pushing for me to setup both a fingerprint AND face scan. I don’t want all of that. Now just to see my account I have to go through 4-5 screens just to say no.
If I don’t want to use 2FA I should be able to opt out of it.
Okay, yeah, I can see from your posts that my HR guy screwed up, and I’m already not thrilled with him because when I asked for FMLA he said, “OK, but you have to come into the office five days a week effective immediately.” And then he hinted that if I don’t overperform, the board might cut my job.
Which is why I applied for a new job, among other things.
Sigh. I’m procrastinating on doing something I have a lot of anxiety about. I’ve been procrastinating for weeks. Going to sleep anxious, waking up anxious. Waiting for the “right time.” My body clearly wants to do the thing without feeling any anxiety. My mind is like, “You can’t escape the anxiety. You are going to feel anxious doing the thing and that is that.”
The thing is calling funders to learn about their grants process and tell them about my agency. An agency I have been working at for ten years, that I know inside and out. I could easily field any number of questions about it on a relaxed day. But when you add intense anxiety into the equation, it’s so hard to think on the spot.
It’s dumb that I’ve been here ten years and I never did this before, but I never had to. My supervisor made the calls, did the schmoozing and just passed along the writing to me. It was comfortable. I miss comfortable.
Ugh.
I realized that earlier today and I’m thrilled.
It’s a weird family trait. My dad always has had great luck on Friday the 13th and it seems like I inherited that. I swear that my whole life, this has been a lucky day for me. And so far, it has been a pretty good day.
I did have to go into the office this morning, but my commute was easy. (Probably the fact that it’s the day before Valentine’s Day, and Monday is also a holiday, means that a lot of people took today off.) I did what I needed to do in the office quickly, then headed back home, where my commute was even faster!
So far I haven’t been getting bugged by coworkers too much, and I’ve been able to catch up on things I needed to get done. It’s a good day so far. If history tells me anything, it’ll be a great day from start to finish.
Maybe if a lot of people have bad luck, it just means there’s more good luck up for grabs for a few folks.
Medical billing is so bad it sent me looking for state agencies to report problems to.
I received an unexpected medical bill, several years after the services.
My kid had therapy services from a company for a long time. They would send me lots of bills, and I’d pay them. Then they’d double bill, and all kinds of bad stuff to the point where I had spreadsheets to keep track of things. It was so bad that the insurance company cut them off, and the therapy company ended up having to forgive all of the copays for several months.
I thought I was completely settled with them, and then I got a new bill from them, years after the last service. Turns out the insurance company had decided to cover several claims from the period the therapy company was cutoff. They sent me a bill for the copays.
I did not want them to have my credit card on file, so went medieval on them, and mailed a check. I thought I was done with it, until the next month when I got another bill from them. The new bill was for 9 of the 11 items on the bill I sent the check to cover.
I email them: WTF???
They respond: Oops, the check was only applied to two items on the original bill
Me: Where did the rest of the money go?
Them: We’ve corrected it and applied it to the rest of the items.
Them: You only owe us for 1 of the 11.
Me: WTF??? I sent enough to cover all of it, where did it go?
Them: Oops, the check was applied wrong again, we’ve completely reset it and applied it correctly, so you are caught up.
Damn it, I figured out a way to get out of making phone calls while still doing my job. No personal growth for me today, no siree!
Scheduled an MRI earlier this week on Monday to start the process of whatever treatment is available to lessen excruciating back pain that has been at a crescendo since October of last year.
Get to the hospital and they do not have me on the schedule.
Keep in mind that at the time it was early morning with a temperature of about -12 degrees Fahrenheit.
Took a minor tantrum at the registration desk and huffed/wobbled out.
Called my doctor’s office and advised if they wanted me to have an MRI they needed to call to reschedule because I was having no part in round two.
Doctor’s office rescheduled for Wednesday and I was treated like a queen when I arrived 
No waiting at all.
The actual MRI was painful to endure. I have had many MRIs in the past w/o too much of an issue. My current body just barely tolerated the 20/25 minute procedure.
Apparently, a flat position on the back is contraindicated with whatever is going on with me.
I resorted to channeling dead relatives for assistance the last 10 minutes.
MRI results are not great and will have to schedule epidural shots with the local pain clinic.
Pain is so bad I am actually looking forward to it (kind of).
Are you shitting me? You accomplished a lot right there!
There is no way to be more productive than figuring out how to avoid something that makes you unproductive.