Posted on 01/11/2013 10:15:07 AM PST by CowboyJay
Over the past month or so, a couple strange things have happened.
First, somebody attempted to hack into my facebook account from somewhere in Arizona.
Then a couple weeks later, I got a call from an Arizona number, but when I attempted to call it back 15 seconds later I got a disconnect message. I then attempted to call my voicemail, but get this, the pin on my voicemail had been changed.
It appears somebody may be trying to steal my identity. Why, I'm not sure, as I don't even want to be me half the time. But I'm still concerned. They're sophisticated enough to hack my FB account and my Verizon account.
Any FReepers out there who've gone through similar issues care to share what I can/should do to protect myself? Is there a law enforcement agency I should contact that deals specifically with this kind of thing?
Protect yourself, mitigate damages as best you can, jump thru untold hoops, then................ Find the bastard who stole your identity, then torture him.
“Keep a very close watch on all charges to the card no matter how small.”
Excellent advice (same with the telephone bill on which unauthorized charges can get placed) . . . a lot of times fraudsters will test run their schemes with a test involving a small transaction to see if it gets noticed by the victim.
I guess I was fortunate. $200 one time, one thousand the other time, both times to the same bank’s credit card (which was changed by the bank after each occurrence.) Still, I didn’t panic, didn’t contact the credit rating bureaus, have never worried about my credit rating number, which is another product invented in recent years to sell to you, and have been getting new credit card offers weekly since then (5-7 years ago) without interruption.
I think mine was being used by several individuals at the same time. There were charges from many western European countries. itunes, games, hotel rooms, rental cars even dating services. I forgot the exact amount but it was well over $2K and it happened very quickly. A matter of days.
The Arizona number wasn’t really disconnected; that was just an outgoing voicemail. The phone company will have a record of who owns it, but good luck getting that information.
Bump for later.
“The phone company will have a record of who owns it, but good luck getting that information.”
Right. The phone company will only release the info in response to a subpoena from law enforcement or pursuant to civil litigation.
If you want, you can bring a John Doe action against the hacker and the voice mail number, and then serve a non-party subpoena against the internet service provider associated with the hacker’s IP address and the voice mail provider to get the info. Sometimes your local court clerk can be helpful in pointing you in the right direction to get all the filings together but it will cost perhaps a grand or two with the filings and to pay for someone to provide service of the non-party subpoenas particularly if they are out of state and are challenged. I’d recommend at this point just providing all the data you have to IC3, and hope for the best while keeping an eye out for the worst.
Read recently that Identity Guard is much better.
Anything is better than nothing.......
My son recently had a break in and lost about $500 in property. He had an iron clad way of tracking one of the electronic items, but the cops said it wasn't worth their time.
They only act if: there is a possibility of a fine (or other $$ windfall for the PD); there is a chance at positive publicity; or a cop is the victim.
Yep. Mine had a few fishing transactions then they tried to run a hotel bill and other stuff in Lisbon Spain. My bank quickly nipped it in the bud.
Accelerate to a speed that allows you to go back in time to 48 hours before the theft occurred. (The acceleration works, I’ve seen superman do it - though on his own power)
Then hire LifeLock.com to prevent problems.
This is the fastest way (no pun intended).
Most virus checkers won't stop a keylogger. My daughter's laptop was showing problems. I started my search. In reviewing text (*.txt) files by date and size, I found a text file full of all her recent keystrokes. Spooky!
Any in your house that had physical access?
I do IT security work so i seen lots of this. You’ve probably been infected with keylogging malware (computer viruses) and your information you use in online banking and purchasing has been stolen. Sometimes malware is not that easy to remove even with decent tools but, you should definitely make sure you’re running a traditional antivirus like program. I prefer “Norton Internet Security” but, it’s only one layer. You need more. You should also consider installing Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/) and MalwareBytes free version(http://www.malwarebytes.org/ and scan your computer with them asap. Another thing i’d advise but, it really requires someone familiar with malware remediation is to run a program like “Autoruns” (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx) to inspect the startup environment (registry, services, scheduled tasks, etc..) for lingering malware execution paths. If you can’t get the malware removed then you’d have to seek a technicians help or restore your computer from the restore disks.
After you get it cleaned consider running your web browser(s) “Sandboxed” in an install of Sandboxie (http://www.sandboxie.com/) with it set to discard the contents of the sandbox on browser close. Browsing the internet from an un-sandboxed web browser has become too dangerous IMHO.
Here's the logic I used to find the file on my daughter's PC. After a couple minutes of keyboard use, the file created or updated by a key logger would display a real recent 'Date modified' in Windows Explorer. I did a search in Windows Explorer for *.txt, using the search entry box in the upper right hand corner. After several minutes, the list was compiled.
Click on the 'Date Modified' column to sort the list by newest first. Then open up the top 10 to see what's in the files. If you a key logging file, it should be easily recognizable.
Hey I got Sued (3 different Law Firms, 3 different States, GA, TN and TX) and didn’t have a clue about what the hell they were talking about.
Some Clown pretending to be me and also pretending to be some Company in Corpus Christi generated humungous unpaid bills ... they went as far as sending the Law Firms their 10% Collection Fee in advance... I spent a day getting grilled by a team of ASSHOLES (they had reams of Invoices) when they get a call from the Bank that “The Check” (Their Collection Fee) bounced... non-existing account. It took the Bank 4 days to figure out the check was bogus.
I ate Prime Rib that evening.
TT
The attempt to hack your Facebook was an attempt to get more personal info to continue their rampage.
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