Some months ago, before there was much publicity regarding phishing and
identity theft, I became a victim.
My first inkling that I’d been scammed
came from a telephone call from my bank asking if I had been to Italy or
Roumania. Of course I had not.
I was informed by the bank that a number
of charges for hotel bills and cash withdrawals had been made from my
account.
Thieves had made a counterfeit Debit Card with which to rifle my
account. I had in the vicinity of $1900.00 in the account so I had to have the
bank transfer enough from my savings to cover these charges, so as not to have
my other checks “bounce”. We closed the old account and opened a new
one.
At first I could not imagine how it happened, then I remembered.
I’ve been an eBayer for several years and I use Paypal frequently.
Some
weeks previously I had received e-mail from eBay stating that there were some
attempts to fraudulently access my account and they wanted to verify my account
information. They said the matter was urgent and if I didn’t respond promptly my
account would be suspended.
I thought this was a bit odd, so I clicked on
several links to see if it was a legitimate message and the links worked so I
complied with the request. The result was that my checking account was cleaned
out.
Since then I have found out ways to verify whether these messages
are bogus or not. If you visit my web site http://www.caveatemptorus.com you
will find detailed information in this regard.
Checking a few links is
not sufficient to verify the validity of a document.
Here in a nutshell
is the best way to avoid this type scam:
DO NOT ANSWER ANY E-MAIL asking for personal financial data.
EBay, Paypal, banks and other institutions never use e-mail for such
purposes.
If you are concerned about your accounts initiate the contact
yourself, then you’ll know you’re dealing with the right
party.
NEVER GIVE YOUR PIN NUMBER to anyone for any
reason. The only purpose it has is to relieve you of your money. Merchants don’t
need it when you make purchases.
DO NOT USE DEBIT CARDS
or your checking account for online or phone transactions, in spite of Paypal’s
inducements. Use a consumer protected Credit Card. You have much better
protection.
I recovered my money from the bank as this was a case of
fraud, but it took several months. Since then I have received any number of
similar messages, purportedly from eBay and Paypal.
You can forward them
to spoofATebay.com for verification. All the ones I sent were bogus.
About the Author
By: George
W. Cannata Owner and publisher of the web site:http://www.caveatemptorus.com
