Let me ask a favor of you. For the love of all that is good in this universe, please do not go and give out your personal or financial information on some site that claims to be your bank , your ISP, eBay, or whatever else the case may be. Phisher scams have been around long enough now that I would hope more people would catch on. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case. Although a nice bout of paranoia has struck a good portion of the Internet population and now they report EVERYTHING, even if it is actual email communication from their provider. The lesser of two evils?
I'm yapping about this because my team at work had to deal with over 30 domains posing as our company today. All of the domains were registered under legitimate user and credit card information, which turned out to belong to a handful of our own customers. The likely scenerio being that they themselves were victims of a phisher scam or site similar to the ones that were set up under their own names. It's not always very easy to explain to someone that you are calling because they've been taken for their money and personal identification. Some appreciate it, but most people really like to shoot down the messenger. And if they aren't even a slight bit computer literate, the conversation goes even less smoothly.
I'll admit it. I've been exposed to this stuff for so long now that I forget that there are actually people who know nothing about the scams or viruses or trojans. I tend to lose patience with some of those people. Not so much the phisher victims, truthfully. I realize that it's pretty easy to get taken if you haven't seen or heard about it before. But for those people who refuse to learn how to patch their OSs, update their anti-virus software, check for spyware and trojans, or, God forbid, get taken by a phisher scam more than once, I am at my wits end. Although, on the flip side I wouldn't really have a job if these sorts of things didn't happen. Hmmm... Pay rent or have everyone fully educated on the matter of Internet crime? I'll have to think about that one for a while.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Absolutely cannot be said enough - extremely important and effective advice. Thanks and welcome Laura!
2 - Laura Tisdale
Thank you! It is a pleasure to be here! I swear that I'm not this preachy all of the time. ;)
3 - Eric Olsen
preach on, woman
4 - Jason Koulouras
Thanks for the post and reminder
5 - Lono
This is all very true, folks. I worked for the last year in the fraud department of a big wireless company and ID theft is very common now. Here is one thing you can do for yourself right now... don't keep your social security number on you. It is in your SS card, probably on any student ID you might have, and on any health insurance cards you may have. Some insano states actually have your SS# as your drivers license number. This makes it FAR too easy for someone to be you if you lose your wallet or purse.