By Maggie DiGiovanni
Special to the EAN
Listening to stories of Identity Theft from friends, neighbors or family, people smile to themselves because they know they are too smart to fall for the tricks of scammers. Yet one morning, a person wakes up, looks at the cellphone and there is the message that signals their downfall.
That is what happened to me. I write about people who defraud people and hack information and have for years. Most are so transparent; it is easy to spot what the person is doing. What I did not count on was my own foolishness. While looking for story possibilities, I literally handed my life over to online thieves all over the world.
Cell phones offer all sorts of apps, and they make game apps more appealing by offering to pay a person for simply playing games. Remembering the adage, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” I had my article – showing that no one gets wealthy by playing games on their cellphones.
I went into one that promised $100 to be paid out as soon as a person hit that magic number. Alarms should have gone off when the site asked for my PayPal account. With my attention firmly set on drafting the article, I dismissed that request as sounding normal if, indeed, there was a payout.
Imagine my surprise when PayPal contacted me a few days later to ask if a request for a $539 payment was legitimate. No, it was not, I replied. Three more requests popped up, using amounts that might look normal, except they came from the same person.
PayPal is normally linked to either a bank account or a debit card or credit card to make payments. With the additional information people must give to open an account, it is a gold mine for hackers who come in through the game backdoor.
I checked one account and discovered that someone faked a check for $500 and the bank cashed it, never realizing that the check number was not in the ones I have. I closed the account and cancelled the debit card. Unfortunately, in closing the account to protect other withdrawals, the bank refused to check back on the fake cashed check.
I alerted another bank to be on the lookout for any strange amounts. The second bank gave me invaluable information to save me from false purchases. And I cancelled my PayPal account, choosing not to set up another.
1) Call the credit agencies: Trans Union, Experian, and Equifax to alert them to identity theft. I was told that checking with one can alert the others. They will send paperwork for your signature to protect you retroactively, so anything lost can be recovered.
2) Contact the Consumer Information Bureau and let them know of the theft.
3) Call any banks or credit unions where you have accounts and, if necessary, cancel accounts.
4) Change all passwords on computer accounts.
What happened to me is called The Dark Web. This is where people find information not available on normal websites. Scammers set up their sites here. When they find your information, they use it or sell it to other scammers, and you can be attacked from all sides.
Some people discover too late that their identities have been stolen. When payment is requested for cars, houses, or huge credit card bills they did not on cards they did not use, it takes a long time to straighten out ruined credit.
I let the urge to write for the protection of others blind me to danger in my own backyard. Do not let this happen to you.
