It is so wierd its like a domino factor or something

I was hit first over the holiday - this guy on ebay spent me for a flat screnn tv then my daugter with a paypal incident and after that I got a cal from my visa acct bank that somewone was trying from india to arrange for a dell package to be deliverd.

i am am about to sign up for trustedid that will keep this from happeniing... but I was wondering about your thoughts about how to prevent becoming the victim of scams and fraud . . . from telephone calls, the Internet, postal mail and to door-to-door salespeople.

I refuse to be hoaxed = and gosh I guess I am am the lucky one that checks my bills.

gosh I am tired of policing my life

Leigh

God, that's horrifying. I'd be so traumatized if that happened to me. Stuff like that makes you so paranoid, seriously.

As for what to do, is just be careful about how you do things. There are many things that you sign up for where you can ask them if you can refrain from giving out your social security number, for one. For another, avoid paying (too often) with debit cards. Debit cards draw directly from your account, and if someone gets that data they can bankrupt you like *snap*. With credit at least you can dispute the charges after the fact.

I myself once got into a tizzy with that stuff and HSBC (!). Thankfully it was sorted out, but I closed the account there immediately after.

Anyway, it seems you want to get yourself an ID protection service. Just know that while it's a good move, don't expect to be 100% protected. Lifelock made claims like that, and now all kinds of people are up in arms about false advertising. What those services do is rope together all kinds of action you can take yourself, and add in insurance and consistent monitoring. They basically take a lot of the work out of policing your finances.

It's up to you to fully secure yourself, but they help.

I found this link so you can comparison shop:

http://www.creditfraudprotection.net/index.php?id=33

NEVER use password reminders on ANYTHING on your computer. Use complex passwords and type them each time you log into something. NEVER tell your passwords to ANYONE EVER. No support requires knowing your password. When someone asks for it, just stop talking to them.

Weird thing:
My BF made a purchase on eBay some months ago. After 3 minutes he was called from America or something like this. Good thing he knows English. He was told he made a purchase, the guy knew ALL about the purchase, even the transaction ID. And he then said there might be a problem with the transaction blah blah blah. My BF hanged the phone and contacted eBay through their onsite contact form. Nothing happened since he didn't say his account information.

When you need to close a transaction ALWAYS go to the site: ebay.com, paypal.com amazon.com etc. NEVER go through the links you receive on the emails and, when receiving emails look at the details. A phishing email has some weird email addresses and redirects in the details.

I always go to the site I have to work on and ALWAYS look in the address bar to see if I am there: paypal.com/.. is what I want to be on and not paypal.scamsite.com ... you get my drift

Thanks for this info... A trap i possibly would have fallen into:/