Internet fraud - identity theft, credit card fraud, etc.

July 31, 2003

All - (and there are several of you receiving this), you know I

don't usually send out this kind of warning, but I received an e-mail

today that was just beyond belief.

It looks like someone is trying to send YOU money. This can in fact

be done with several on-line services (such as PayPal). However,

when you click on the link in the message to go to their site, it

says you have to set up an account, then it asks for your credit card

number, address, name, the security number on your credit card, your

social security number, and so on. There appear to be a number of

clickable links on the page, but they don't actually DO anything.

All you can do is click on the one to submit information. (I tried

this without actually putting in any info, and it prompts you for

missing information.) There are other variations of this scam, such

as supposedly receiving forms from the IRS that you are ordered to

fill out and return.

DON'T DO IT!

One of the rules at our house is that if someone calls you on the

phone, you don't give them your credit card number. Ever. It

doesn't matter who they say they are, or what charity they say they

are calling for.

This is the same type of issue, but in this case, they want even more

information than that.

I investigated the registration of this particular website, and it

was set up on July 30th - TODAY. Folks, you don't register a

legitimate website and have it up and running the same day with real

content. You have to get it set up on a hosting server, you do have

to do some testing, and you would reserve the URL ahead of time.

This is a hot scam where they are trying to collect as much info as

possible from the unsuspecting, and then get out of town.

DON'T FALL FOR THIS KIND OF STUFF!

I know most of you wouldn't, but there are a few of you that keep

sending stuff to the e-mail lists that I manage (or to me personally)

that could have been shot down in 60 seconds by checking out the

story.

Iris

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