Re: OT--cc theft/need help/advice

You have obviously been a victim of identity theft. Hopefully, you caught it before major damage was done. I'd call all 3 national credit reporting agencies (Trans Union, Experian and Equifax) and alert them. Check all of your credit cards for suspicious activity. Consider changing you passwords for online accounts, if any. Runs a malware scan on your computer in case you [God forbid] picked up a "keystroke logger" and every single thing you type on your keyboard (passwords, userIDs, etc.) is being sent to someone in God-knows-where.

You most likely fell victim to a "phishing" attack where you "fell for" a bogus E-Mail that looked like it was from a firm that you had an account with (although there are other possibilities).

[Note ... to succumb to a "phishing" attack, you don't have to open any attachments, you just have to think that an E-Mail that looks like it's from [E-Bay, Pay-Pal, brokerage firm, bank, credit card company .... etc.] really is from then when it's not. These can look VERY authentic and I've seen some very creative ones lately (one from E-Bay that invites you to become a "power seller" ALMOST got me). Note the IE7 has a very good "phishing filter" if you turn it on (but it's off by default).

It's also possible that the information was not stolen over the internet, or was not stolen directly from you. Examples:

-A clerk at a store that you do business (especially restaurants, where the waiters often take your credit card to process the transaction) captured your credit card information

-The computers of a store that you do business with were hacked. For example, recently it was disclosed that the computers of Marshalls and TJMaxx were hacked and the credit card information of 45 million customers was thusly obtained. There have been many similar instances of data theft from both retail firms and government agencies.

If that's how it happened, the good news is that they probably only got the information from one single credit card, which is a much better situation than when an identity thief gets everything (ALL of your personal data, multiple passwords, multiple online IDs, etc.)


MZB wrote:
OK, totally OT, but a strange thing happened today.



I need some advice. Today I received a product that I didn't order. I called the company and found out that it was ordered over the internet with my name, address, and VISA card (it's a card that I pretty much use for online purposes).

I then went to my credit card site and found all sorts of purchases made in the last month -basically subscriptions made online (eg: Blockbusters). I haven't even received that credit card bill yet. I called VISA and they canceled the card and will send me a new card. Meanwhile, I am of course very concerned as to what is going on. I called Blockbusters and found that a subscription was opened using my name, address, and cc. The security questions/answers were wrong. The email address left was a phony (well, not mine, of course). So far, no DVD's or anything was shipped/ordered. I am trying to figure out what the perpetrator was to gain?? Is the person waiting to see if I discover it and cancel the card? If not, would they then change the address or maybe just order stuff shipped to a different address?

I checked my credit report and it is clean so far. Nothing new set up. I worry about identity theft but hopefully I can take the right steps to prevent that. I also wonder how the heck my card got stolen like this. I don't open email attachments; I don't visit questionable web-sites; and I use up-to-date firewall, spyware, and anti-virus programs (Zone Alarm, ad-aware, avg). I just now added a rootkit checker. So far, everything has been clean. Of course, I guess thieves have ways of getting into sites and stealing this information.

I would appreciate any advice and answers to my questions above?

MB


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