Identity Theft

Well, something really scary happened to me a couple of days ago. I had tried to change my bank information on my PayPal account last week and had some trouble with it, so when I got an e-mail from PayPal's security team, I didn't think much of it. It told me I needed to update my security settings. So I clicked on the link, signed into my account, and started filling out the information. It wasn't until I got to the bottom of the form that I started smelling something fishy. It didn't click until they asked me for my ATM pin and my SS#. That didn't sound right...

So I asked Ryan if that's something they would need and he came over and spotted the fraud right away. It turns out there were a number of red flags before the atm and soc. questions. First of all, a legitimate website shouldn't ask for information in an e-mail, or send you a link. They should tell you to sign into your account, and then change the information there. Second, the link was bad. All websites that require personal information start with an https--the "s" is for secure websites. And the word "paypal" should have probably been in the link, which it wasn't. Apparently if you type the address in your toolbar instead of clicking on it, that can help you determine whether it's a fake or not.

So I reported the e-mail to PayPal who promptly e-mailed me back and told me it was in fact fraudulent. I was literally one click away from giving away all of my personal information and creating a huge nightmare. I did give them my password, so I had to go through and change my password on PayPal and on all my other important accounts that had the same password (not really a good idea anyway..)

I thought I was smart enough to see through those things. It turns out I was, but barely. If I hadn't been paying attention, I would have had a big problem... Very scary..

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