Ernest Jimenez: I enjoyed your article on credit card fraud. I ran into something similar while on Match.com. Someone passing as a young beautiful woman tried to get to know me on a romantic level. She claimed to live close by and we had things in common. She sent me a picture of herself. She claimed to be a model. The pictures were of a beautiful woman. She claimed to be looking for an honest man (and that looks did not matter because she had her heart broken in the past). We emailed for a long time, getting closer – until she hit me with a story about being at work modeling in Nigeria, and her hotel burning to the ground, and having no money to pay to get back home. She eventually asked to send her money to get back home. I was always apprehensive about the matter, and how she was moving too quickly, and how it sounded too good for a beautiful woman to be contacting me. Someone 15 years older – and not exactly model material. I never sent her money. Went on the Internet and found posts of other people that had been contacted in a similar scam.
Doug Rice: They are able to get your SSN from your credit headers. We use a service at our firm that can track down individuals using various means – such as public records. The addresses and telephone numbers can change, but most people have credit cards (so the information contained in the credit headers is most accurate). Credit headers assist in finding people the majority of the time. Of course, the service we use can only be used by law firms (as there is a major process we had to go through to sign up for the service).
Mike Farrell: Let me give you just one example of how easy it is. Military service numbers were replaced by SS numbers about 30 year ago. People leaving the service were advised to have their discharge papers recorded in their county of residence, in the event they lost the original and needed a quick replacement. County records are public records, and many can be accessed through a County website. Security provisions can be and are overcome by hackers. Births, deaths, marriages, deeds, mortgage liens, divorce decrees, prenuptual agreements, etc. etc. etc. filed with a County Recorder are available to knowledgeable hackers. 25 years ago, I was commissioned, by a pool servicing company to provide a list of all residences in California that had a swimming pool. Download time from my legitimate data source was a joke. I’d start the download for a County in the early evening, and it was still running, the following morning. Los Angeles County was interesting. I learned the home addresses of many movie stars and name recognizable other dignitaries. I knew what they paid for it, and when they bought it. I knew the lot size, building size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms. I have since learned that any form you fill out, any question you answer, any data you give is subject to “public” scrutiny and knowledge. The days of “Sam Spade, Private Detective” are obsolete. Pay a hacker enough money, and he will discover more about you than you can remember.
[tags]fraud,identity theft,theft,personal information,credit card fraud,social security number,online security[/tags]