Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Eternal Vigilance!

[caption id="attachment_605" align="alignnone" width="575" caption="One way to lose your identity"]One way to lose your identity[/caption]

Once, years ago I almost fell for exactly this type of scam. I caught myself in time, but it was a near thing. Remember that if your credit card, bank, or anyone else who has enough information to pretend to be you ever calls asking for you to prove who you are, hang up and get the number off the back of your credit card or out of the phone book and call them. If they still say your information has been stolen, you can take the appropriate steps. But never give personally identifying information in direct response to a phone call, email, or mail.

Cartoon used with permission.

2 comments:

  1. You could also ask them to authenticate themselves first. I did this with my bank thinking I could avoid them when they were chasing a payment... but they happily provided some details of the account which were not enough to expose my own identity but were enough to assure me that they really were the bank.

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  2. Verifying they are who they claim they are is the point. I'm glad you were paying attention and made them prove who they were. A lot of people don't.

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