Recent Blog Entries
Identity theft
Written by Colin Devroe on August 31, 2005
Erik Sagen, author of Kartooner.com, wrote up a post trying to help all of us protect ourselves from emails which try to rob us of our identities by posing as legitimate correspondence from our banks. Now that’s a sentence that requires a sip of water to finish.
This article is near and dear to my heart simply because I’ve written similar articles as well. Erik’s Email Identity Theft goes hand in hand with Inventive spam, Identity theft via spam and Account suspended - multiple password failures.
Based on the sheer number of these emails which plague each and every one of us, I’m led to think that somehow somewhere these messages are successful. Have you read about or had any experience with people succumbing to these scams? And, have you read any articles similar to these that would be important for people to read to help protect themselves?
September 1st, 2005 at 12:39 am
I had this happen to me about three years ago now. I received a very well constructed email that appeared to be from my bank, requesting that I veryify my username and password. The email linked to a login page that was identical to my banks login page, and had a url so close to my banks url, that I didn’t suspect anything. I entered my username and password, the site thanked me for verifying my username and password and even logged me into the legitimate internet banking application where I could see my accounts listed with current balances. I logged out thinking nothing of it until later that afternoon someone from my bank called me asking if I’d transfered any money overseas recently. I responded “yes” because money is regularly transferred out of my account to a NPO in the US. He then asked me if I’d transferred $10,000 AUD to Romania early that day. It was then that I realised I’d been screwed. Fortunately the bank was insured for such occurences and I got my ten grand back. I felt like a right git though for getting caught by the scam.
September 1st, 2005 at 1:04 am
While I don’t know of anyone personally to whom this has happened, I keep receiving them from various sources that look like PayPal. I usually go the extra mile and do a WhoIs lookup on the domain owner, and get them shut down.
I do know a gal who had her purse stolen out of her car, and as a result a string of bank accounts and overspending resulted. She has had to spend the last year dealing with this and trying to get her life back.
So, word the to wise, try to prevent identity theft, whether it be protecting yourself against fraudulent emails, or simply locking your car. It’s out there, and it ain’t pretty.
September 1st, 2005 at 1:32 am
The funny thing is I receive all these emails from paypal and banks that I dont even belong to!
The very first PayPal “confirm your details etc” email I got, I replied to the email saying, “please delete my account. It doesnt work in South Africa”.
Then after receiving another PayPal email, I relised something was up since the email looked different.
So the key to any of these scams is knowing that your bank or PayPal will *never* ask you to verify anything. Dont do it out of curosity. Just delete it…
September 1st, 2005 at 10:31 am
I received some Paypal emails recently from a moron on ebay. He pretended to buy my a mobile phone I was listing and then sent me 4 emails from Paypal saying that my account had be credited with the necessary funds. This guy was clearly a rookie though as , aside from receiving 4 identical emails, his html wasn’t up to much and the emails I received looked awful.
I reported him to anyone who would listen; ebay, paypal, his domain host, spamcop and even the FBI. So far, though, only ebay have had the decency to get back to me and let me know that they are following it up.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:28 pm
I am fighting a situation like this right now with my domain registrar. I got hit with a “need to contact us” scam. When I got the e-mail, I tried calling the customer support line at the registrar but they put me on terminal ignore. I finally clicked on the link in the e-mail (which looked legit) which took me to a perfect copy of the registrar’s login screen. After logging in I found the page didn’t work so I went back to the root address and logged in again. I was able to check my account which looked fine and I didn’t think anything of it. A few days later my account was hijacked and my credit card was run up to the max for bogus domain names and hosting. I had never heard of a phishing scheme for domains before.
My credit card company took care of the charges but the domain company has been worse than the hackers. They double charged my account and now have closed it. All of my domain names now point at ad sites and I can’t get them to talk to me. Numerous e-mails, phone calls and chat sessions have got me nowhere. I went to the corporate level and still nobody will talk with me. I found that many other people are having the same problem and upset customers have opened a web site listing the problems with the company.
Bottom line, be very careful of who you buy domains and hosting from. Ask questions and check customer support before you buy! Always right click or check the status bar on any link in an e-mail to see if it points to a different site.
I just had to change my blog from a .com to a new .org (from a different company) because of the registrar problem which is a major hassle not to mention search engine rankings and links etc. If anyone has any ideas where to go for domain name problems I would love to hear from you.
September 5th, 2005 at 3:15 pm
I don’t know anyone who’s actually be fooled by phishing, but my friend has a dedicated server, and he installed PHPMyAdmin without changing the default password. A hacker found the fresh install and was able to setup a phishing site on his server. Paypal contacted his hosting company, and then the hosting company shut him down until he could prove that he wasn’t the one that created the phishing site.
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August 16th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Most of the phishing tactics are fairly transparent to me it’s the behind the scenes theft that really worries me. Currently, I’m using Digital Vault to secure my personal files. So now I have a good level of confidence that I’ll be protected from hacking and related intrusive applications. But, as far as people succumbing to scams I have seen some really good Paypal clones, as well as some Ebay ones, so I can easily understand how some people would be fooled.
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