Should I be worried about having my identity stolen?
This is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and relax since 8:00 this morning.
Who wants to hear about my day?
Okay, so a few days ago, I posted an ad on Craigslist selling my portable DVD player and 3 Disney DVD’s. A woman named "Judith" replied. She said that she was interested, and that she would pay me 0.00 + the cost of express mail international shipping. Everything looked legit. Then I got an email from Paypal stating that I’d just recieved an instant payment from her. It stated that I had to ship the items, and then email proof of shipping, and that then my paypal acount would be credited. So, this morning, I went down to the post office, packaged up the item, paid the in shipping, and emailed the tracking number.
THEN I started reading things on the internet, and realized that I was being scammed. I was freaking out, because my boyfriend warned me of this, but I shurgged it off, and said it was okay because I got an email from paypal. I went and looked at the email from "paypal" again, and saw that the email address that it was sent from (small, in bracketts) was not paypal. It was something like shipping.proof@consultant.com or something like that. So, I sent the emai to Paypal, and they emailed me back and said that it was a phishing email. Right away, I called my Mom. She said to call the post office, and then go pick up the package. That’s exactly what I did. I got the package back, and my money back, and I sent this so called "judith Pope" a nasty email. It shoud have been a red flag when she said she wanted it shipped to NIGERIA. For some reason it wasn’t. My parents also lended me each so that I can buy healthy foods still.
I love my parents. I love Andree too, but I hate that he always has to be right, and most of the time is, so I think I’m going to keep my story for the day to myself. From now on, I only sell through ebay.
should i be worried about my identity being stolen? the only info they have is my first and last name, my address, and my email.
2 Responses
so got board
01 Apr 2010
Ricesoul’s
01 Apr 2010
change ur name
I don’t like the fact that they have your Address I think there are some nasty things that can be done with that. First I want to say that since I am not a criminal and have not run into a problem with identity theft myself I can not say exactly what the threat is. However criminals are usually not much different then anyone else. so if it were me running this scam I would not so much be interested in your Identity as I would in the products you were sending me completely at your own cost, products I could then Immediately sell and if I charged that buyer the shipping I’d never pay a dime and have no costs – all profits. Per purchase this might not be a big deal but in a day someone could send these e-mails dozens and dozens of times and make good money doing it. so with that said I don’t think they were after your Identity but I do think you should keep a close eye on your: credit score, banking accounts, and personal mail sent to that address for the next couple of months just in case and look for irregularities. and actually you should probably do this anyway there are lots of ways for anyone to steal your identity when you least expect it.