Scams like these

[MEL_Traveller]

Identity thief has got my family, lost everything in savings account (90% of my net worth, basically). Rest of family lost money in some other accounts but a lot less. Am overseas with no phone but the number does not seem to have been ported so not sure how they did it. They ported the parents numbers.

Father seems to have malware on his computer, this is likely the root cause. Not sure though, until I figure out more about what they have and don't have. Still away for a while so will have to just monitor what I can and hope!

Have enough cash and b/u cc to keep me going though.

Oh! That's terrible news

 

[drron]

Identity thief has got my family, lost everything in savings account (90% of my net worth, basically). Rest of family lost money in some other accounts but a lot less. Am overseas with no phone but the number does not seem to have been ported so not sure how they did it. They ported the parents numbers.

Father seems to have malware on his computer, this is likely the root cause. Not sure though, until I figure out more about what they have and don't have. Still away for a while so will have to just monitor what I can and hope!

Have enough cash and b/u cc to keep me going though.

Hope this can be sorted for you.A terrible thing to happen.

 

[drross]

Identity thief has got my family, lost everything in savings account (90% of my net worth, basically). Rest of family lost money in some other accounts but a lot less. Am overseas with no phone but the number does not seem to have been ported so not sure how they did it. They ported the parents numbers.

Father seems to have malware on his computer, this is likely the root cause. Not sure though, until I figure out more about what they have and don't have. Still away for a while so will have to just monitor what I can and hope!

Have enough cash and b/u cc to keep me going though.

how horrible. good luck Cynicor

 

[Pushka]

Good grief cynicor. Sounds awful.

 

[sinophile888]

What a dreadful thing to happen.

 

[quokka77]

Ugh. That's my worst nightmare. Hopefully your bank will cover the losses.

 

[Steady]

Thinking of you cynicor - a terrible thing to happen

 

[andye]

Hope you can sort things out eventually. Best wishes

 

[terry88]

ha, love trawling through the collections here. I rarely get or see these with my spam turned on sending everything to the trash folder.

 

[whatmeworry]

Identity thief has got my family, lost everything in savings account (90% of my net worth, basically). Rest of family lost money in some other accounts but a lot less. Am overseas with no phone but the number does not seem to have been ported so not sure how they did it. They ported the parents numbers.

Father seems to have malware on his computer, this is likely the root cause. Not sure though, until I figure out more about what they have and don't have. Still away for a while so will have to just monitor what I can and hope!

Have enough cash and b/u cc to keep me going though.

My guess, keyboard logger.

 

[JohnK]

Identity thief has got my family, lost everything in savings account (90% of my net worth, basically). Rest of family lost money in some other accounts but a lot less. Am overseas with no phone but the number does not seem to have been ported so not sure how they did it. They ported the parents numbers.

Sorry to hear this terrible news.

This does my head in trying to understand how they are able to get away with these scams. Surely they leave a trace from your account to their account or are all the accounts they use throw away accounts?

 

[Cynicor]

Not sure, it's hard to do anything from here except freeze things.

So it seems a new sim was activated on my phone account. I didn't think anything of it when I lost service because I was with Optus and it had dodgy roaming before.

Lesson learned- if you suddenly get no service, even if roaming, call your carrier and check. If their tech support is useless (Optus definitely is) then have them check the sim number specifically, and lock everything down.

 

[OATEK]

An awful experience, and thanks for the SIM tip.

 

[Pushka]

I wonder Cynicor - Did someone open up an email on their PC that contained a Word Doc that was blank when opened? The email could even have come from someone they know or a legitimate business.

This is the latest and nastiest thing happening. The blank doc contains the keystroke tracker.

 

[Cynicor]

Dad got the malware from somewhere. I believe it is less likely in email than dodgy software etc, as he is relatively email saavy but had gotten malware before. All very annoying.

 

[Pushka]

Dad got the malware from somewhere. I believe it is less likely in email than dodgy software etc, as he is relatively email saavy but had gotten malware before. All very annoying.

Sure, but this is a very new way and I almost got sprung when I came back from work in January. I opened an email from someone I knew and it was a blank document. I contacted our IT department and they said not to use the computer for anything and if I had used online banking then to change my passwords on another computer. Which I immediately did.

I consider myself to be very email savvy btw!

 

[JohnK]

Sure, but this is a very new way and I almost got sprung when I came back from work in January. I opened an email from someone I knew and it was a blank document. I contacted our IT department and they said not to use the computer for anything and if I had used online banking then to change my passwords on another computer. Which I immediately did.

I consider myself to be very email savvy btw!

I really need to understand more.

You opened a blank email. And this blank email installed a key logger on your machine and logs all your movements?

The setting I wanted on my laptop was no unauthorised downloads onto my laptop. No cookies. Nothing. The first hurdle was the Qantas website. Can't use the website if cookies are not enabled.

How did we get to this point? We trust everyone. We allow faceless corporations access to our secure information. We design everything in such a way leaving a backdoor for scum to commit these scams. All for our own good?

I need to find a way to shut this backdoor. I want to be in control of who is able to get information from my machine. I think ZoneAlarm used to do that quite well.

 

[rainbowgirl]

I really need to understand more.

You opened a blank email. And this blank email installed a key logger on your machine and logs all your movements?

The setting I wanted on my laptop was no unauthorised downloads onto my laptop. No cookies. Nothing. The first hurdle was the Qantas website. Can't use the website if cookies are not enabled.

How did we get to this point? We trust everyone. We allow faceless corporations access to our secure information. We design everything in such a way leaving a backdoor for scum to commit these scams. All for our own good?

I need to find a way to shut this backdoor. I want to be in control of who is able to get information from my machine. I think ZoneAlarm used to do that quite well.

Our home network is protected by "virtual machines" The sections of our network that are linked to the internet can only access a selected amount of other parts of the network. If malware or viruses came in via an email or webpage they wouldn't be able to disable the rest of the network.

 

[medhead]

An admin of one of the Facebook groups I'm in put up a warning about a message going around that says: "This photo of you has been posted and everyone is laughing at you. Click this link".

Don't click the link

 

[moa999]

Links, or any documents, particularly anything that asks you to enable macros can be very dangerous