Deciphering "recently active" alert

[CogInTheMachine]

I got a "account that has been inactive for more than 3 months has recently become active" alert.  The problem is I can't make any sense of the details.

The alert posted on 08/04/2017.  And the "date of last activity" isn't a date, it's two dates: "04/01/2017 -> 07/01/2017".  So, did the recent "becoming active" happen on 07/01/2017 (suspiciously exactly three months after 04/01/2017), or around 08/04/2017, when they sent the alert?

Also frustrating is that it doesn't tell me which account.  It gives me the company (CITIBANK CBNA) and I do have two credit cards with Citi, but neither one of them has been inactive and recently become active around either 07/01/2017 or 08/04/2017.

I would write this off as some random quirk, but I also got an email from a vendor (Discount Tire) thanking me for my purchase on 08/03/2017 and asking me to fill out a survey -- but I have never bought anything from Discount Tire, nor can I find any unexplained charges to any of my accounts around that date.  So I'm worried that there's some phantom Citibank card out there somehow associated with my name, but I don't know how to track that down or confirm or deny it.

thanks for any advice (and man I wish myFICO would clarify their alerts),

eric

[Anonymous]

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@CogInTheMachine wrote:

I got a "account that has been inactive for more than 3 months has recently become active" alert.  The problem is I can't make any sense of the details.

The alert posted on 08/04/2017.  And the "date of last activity" isn't a date, it's two dates: "04/01/2017 -> 07/01/2017".  So, did the recent "becoming active" happen on 07/01/2017 (suspiciously exactly three months after 04/01/2017), or around 08/04/2017, when they sent the alert?

Also frustrating is that it doesn't tell me which account.  It gives me the company (CITIBANK CBNA) and I do have two credit cards with Citi, but neither one of them has been inactive and recently become active around either 07/01/2017 or 08/04/2017.

I would write this off as some random quirk, but I also got an email from a vendor (Discount Tire) thanking me for my purchase on 08/03/2017 and asking me to fill out a survey -- but I have never bought anything from Discount Tire, nor can I find any unexplained charges to any of my accounts around that date.  So I'm worried that there's some phantom Citibank card out there somehow associated with my name, but I don't know how to track that down or confirm or deny it.

thanks for any advice (and man I wish myFICO would clarify their alerts),

eric

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Have you tried calling Citi and having them look into it?  They might be able to see something on thier end that you cannot see.

[credit_is_crack]

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@CogInTheMachine wrote:

I got a "account that has been inactive for more than 3 months has recently become active" alert.  The problem is I can't make any sense of the details.

The alert posted on 08/04/2017.  And the "date of last activity" isn't a date, it's two dates: "04/01/2017 -> 07/01/2017".  So, did the recent "becoming active" happen on 07/01/2017 (suspiciously exactly three months after 04/01/2017), or around 08/04/2017, when they sent the alert?

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i recently got this for two accounts, the one thing i noticed was these two accounts did not have a reported balance for at least the last 3 months (the date range listed seemed to be the 'timeframe' the alert was looking at, 90 days from the most recent balance posting). maybe its a new feature that says "if an account reports a balance today, and this account did not have a reported balance in the last 90 days, trigger the alert"...i could see them passing it off as a sub-feature for monitoring fraud on a credit card in case you dont normally check on sock-drawered accounts. I'm just guessing though

i had the first alert 7/23 and the other card on 07/29... hope that helps..