A couple months ago, while I was still blogging for AOL Black Voices, I posted an item about preventing identity theft. It's a huge problem, especially given how much business most people do electronically these days (how many times have you punched in your credit card number or address online this month?).
But even though I've talked about this topic on TV before, I never thought I'd know somebody who fell for one of those "phishing" schemes, you know, where they send you an email saying your lost aunt in Nigeria has a trillion dollars for you and all she needs is your social and bank account number to get it to you. They're so obviously scams that no reasonable person, I figured, would go for it.
I stand corrected. A friend of mine who I know is a really smart and pretty sophisticated woman, wasted no time replying with her social security number and bank account pin number after getting an email claiming she has refund money coming from the IRS. The money never came, of course and she spent the rest of her day cancelling credit cards, closing bank accounts and placing fraud alerts in her credit files.
All that is to say that I suppose not even smart people are immune to dumb scams when greed is involved. Free money? Great, here's my info! So in the interest of helping you protect yourself, here's a link to the Federal Trade Commission's tips on identity theft.
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