A long-time Lockergnomie has a few more phishing stories to share – listen and learn.
First, let me tell you about a recent con. I knew it was a con when the email told me NOT to tell anyone that I had won a lotto drawing. I played along, just to see how they were going to work it. After several emails congratulating me on my winnings of up to $1,000,000 GBP (pound sterling), they directed me to some fake attorney who I was to hire for a fee to verify I am who I am. Just a note here, with my very first reply email, I stated that I will give only my email, my home address, and my phone number, and will not pay any money to anyone, because if this was a legit operation, just send the money to my home address. This should have tipped them off that I was on to their game; it didn’t deter them for one second.
So, as soon as they said to contact the supposed legal attorney, I answered that I was NOT going to pay anyone for anything – just send me the money. This did not deter them in the slightest. About a week later, at 11:00 PM in KS (isn’t that about 2 or 3 AM in England?) I got a phone call (blocked, by the way) from a man with no English accent (sounded like he was from India or something), claiming to be an attorney wanting me to start the process (send him money) so he could verify that I am who I am. Aside from the fact that I was irritated to be woken up from bed, I flatly stated that from the very beginning I was not going to pay anything to anyone if I seriously won a lottery. If they want to take it out of my lottery winnings, I have no problem with that – as long as his fee was reasonable. He claimed that he could not do that because of English law, to which I responded: “Well, I’m not in England now, am I?”
He sounded disgusted that their scam didn’t work, and I imagined that he was irritated that he spent time on a phone call (probably on a stolen phone) early in the morning hours. Now, listen to this – about a week and a half later, I got the same type of email from the same type of lotto winnings from the UK. I fell off my chair laughing as I hit the delete button.
Then, I got a phone call another night – a man claiming he was from Target, and that someone was trying to use my credit card for a $1089.00 purchase. He told me to call some 800 number to get information. He verified the last four digits of my credit card. Just a note: my credit card company sends statements via email, with only the last 4 digits showing, the rest of the numbers are Xed out. So, instead of calling the 800 number, I called the credit card company, explained what was going on, and changed my credit card number. The Fraud person from my credit card company mentioned that NO RETAIL outlet has any personal information on credit card users, so they would not be calling me. It is just an accept or reject when run through the machines. I changed my credit card number just for a safety insurance (to help me sleep better at night). I did give the fraud person from the credit card company the 800 number to let them deal with it if they wanted to. But this is just a warning to all people: NO RETAIL COMPANY should be calling you as they do not have your information.
I am on another quest right now. I have sent an email to Zabasearch asking them how do they protect identity theft from criminals that use their service when they send in random Social Security numbers. Zabasearch is an information gathering company on the Internet that (claims it) can provide the following: Public Record Finder, Background Records, Free People Search, Phone Book, Internet Address Finder. So far, no answer – but its service can track a person for the past 20 years. What I am concerned about is if I send them a hundred random Social Security numbers, out of those, I should be able to steal at least 75% of the information that I get from the company. It claims to only use public records – but since when is my SS# public record? I know this is supposed to be the information age, but it seems to me that any information other than what’s in the phone book should be private with about 20 years minimum per infraction in prison for anyone (and I mean ANYONE) who provides anything more than the phone book information. It is getting to a point that I am ready to change my name and not tell anyone (just venting).
This is a great warning for those of you who have either been hit by potential fraud, or might be in the not-so-distant future. Either print out this message, or send it to your less technically-minded friends and relatives. Could very well save them time, money, and frustration. Please?
[tags]phishing,scam,fraud,identity theft,theft,credit card,vishing,credit fraud[/tags]