You must adopt a watchful approach to spoil the on going efforts of identity thieves to get your personal information. There are many lucrative scams out there to trap victims. This page provides details of some common scams being tried on lots of people and alerts you so that you could save your time, money and above all the heartache.
The best protection to guard your personal information is to have a good knowledge of your surroundings because there is nothing that can stop identity thieves to obtain your personal information. Following are few guidelines to keep this information safe.
You may receive calls from identity thieves pretending to be a financial
institution or credit card employee. The thief narrates the fake story and
asks for your personal information like your name, date of birth, Social
Security and credit card number. Beware of these social engineering
telephone scams in which identity thieves use different techniques varied
from day to day. Before giving your personal information, ask the caller
that you'll provide this information only after verifying her story. Don't
provide the information if you feel uncomfortable. Get a callback number and
search it online at
www.anywho.com. Register online at
www.donotcall.gov to
avoid such calls.
Caller ID Spoofing is a new invention by identity thieves. In this trend the
culprit calls from a phone number that is not originated from the actual
company's phone. In such cases you see numbers like 000-000-0000 or Out of
Area on your ID screen. These hidden calls having all zeros are spoofed
numbers that you must avoid answering. Why a legal business entity would
want to hide their phone number by displaying all zeros.
In another instance, private or unknown numbers are used and you know the
caller only when you receive the phone. Never accept calls from numbers you
don't recognize.
Finally, give personal information to someone only when you initiated the
call and always avoid giving such information in public places over the
phone.
The Internet has provided many opportunities to people around the globe including identity thieves. Wealth of personal information like Personal Identification Number (PIN), Social Security Number (SSN), date of birth etc. is available for identity thieves on internet. They use internet to trap potential targets. One such example is receiving a spam email from a reputable source, which asks you to verify your personal information by following a link. Once you're on the site, you're requested to provide information like your full name, birth date, Social Security Number, credit card number and its expiry date. Using this scam technique, the person casts a net to trap innocent people and is therefore called phishing (pronounced fishing). They may also threaten you by saying that your account would be deleted if the requested information is not provided. Never fall pray to it.
A new technique is being applied using the old Nigerian letter scam. An e-mail is simultaneously sent to many people around the world stating that the sender has millions of dollars in the bank account of his country & he intends to transfer this money to your bank account. In return he promises to pay you a certain percentage. Many people are sucked with the temptation of millions of dollars after giving account and routing numbers of their banks helping the culprit sweeping their bank account.
In this scam the culprit, a buyer, sends a cashier's check to the seller which is more than the amount of the listed item. He lures the seller with extra amount for the product, shipping and a little extra and asks to send the difference back to him. The seller loses all the money plus the item when he is informed by his bank that the check is no good.
Sometimes you may receive e-mails about job offers for jobs you never applied for. Beware of such emails and don't proceed to take such jobs even if you're unemployed. Listed below are few common phishing scams:
These scams have trapped millions of people around the world especially unemployed. This scam offers to earn thousands from the comfort of your home. The thief asks for a little sum of money to provide the details on how to get started. Not all work from home programs are scams. Perform online check for legitimate companies at FTC or Better Business Bureau (BBB).
In this scam you receive an e-mail from the thief offering you to cash overseas checks to have all the funds in US currency. For this purpose he asks for your bank account to deposit the check. Once you give him your bank account number, he deprives you of your money by sweeping out your account.
The thief offers the victim with a job of shipping agent to reship the goods giving the reason that it is convenient to ship the items using this method. In fact, the goods are purchased using stolen credit card and are hard to track when reshipped. The stolen goods are reshipped through the victim's address who remains on the hook to receive search warrant.
