A Few Common Identity Theft Scams To Be Aware About
Unfortunately, the web is an environment that provides enough opportunity for unscrupulous people to succeed in indulging in identity theft scams and the fact of the matter is that today such instances have become more and more common, often without the victim even being aware of when his or her identity was stolen. A very common instance of identity theft scams is when you come across advertisements that offer to sell you popular as well as in-demand consumer electronic items such as digital cameras at ridiculously low prices that you normally won't be able to find anywhere else including at the manufacturer's website.
Don't Pay Upfront
In this very typical identity theft scam, a feature of it is that you (the victim) are first of all assured that you won't even have to pay a cent until such time as you receive your merchandise. This, in fact, is a very clever ruse that is used to make you lower your guard and thus provide your personal details to the scamster who then uses your name but with the credit card number that actually belongs to a third person in order to purchase goods from a legitimate site.
Then, when the seller ships the item you (the victim) will end up authorizing your credit card to be debited or worse still, end up making direct payment to the scamster who has deceived you into thinking that you are going to receive the merchandise while in reality it only means that they will have succeeded in making off with your money.
Another common form of identity theft scams is the one in which you will be contacted via email by someone claiming to be from Paypal, your credit card company or an internet service provider or even from eBay who needs to get your personal details in order to update the database with your particulars because of various reasons that are put forth including to repair hacked databases or even because of database crashes.
These are simply very clever ruses used by scamsters who need to ‘verify' your personal details while in reality they only want to get hold of your information and then use it to do illegal acts.
If you are wise, you will never ever divulge your personal information to anybody even if it is a trusted company such as eBay or AOL because they never ask you for such information as they already have it. In case, you even get a whiff of something suspicious taking place, you should take the precaution of contacting the concerned company directly and be sure that you are actually dealing with an authentic person and company before divulging any personal details, or else pay the penalty of having been victimized by these and other forms of identity theft scams.
