Roadster280
LE
It appears that I am the subject of an identity theft operation. Some weird things happened in the last couple weeks:
1. My employer informed me that someone (unknown) filed an unemployment claim with my state (Tennessee) and when they verified the last day of work, realized it was fraudulent when told "he still works here".
2. A credit card I have has a monitoring feature, and I got a notification that my Social Security number has appeared on the dark web.
3. Yesterday, I received a bank statement for an account I don't have/didn't open, with a bank I have no other business with. I used to be a customer, but not for 5 years or more.
The bank statement looked pukka, so I googled the phone number of the bank (a very large one), and called in, rather than call the number on the statement, in case that was a scam. It turns out the account is genuine, and was opened around the time of the unemployment claim, although I don't know for sure the two are connected.
What can I expect as the next steps on the part of the attacker? Curiously, the account had $0 in it. No attempt to obtain actual credit so far, so I wonder if the account was to be used to have the unemployment paid in. Or perhaps there's another stage to the attack yet to come.
Here's what I've done so far:
Reported the unemployment fraud to the Police/Sheriff, and got a case number. I don't expect them to investigate though.
Had the bank cancel the account.
It looks as if the bad guys have:
My name (but not middle name)
My address
My email address (one of them)
My SSN
I think all I can do now is:
Change all my passwords and PINs on financial sites to unique, long crypto type ones that Safari suggests. I've been resistant to doing that, because of usability concerns. I chose a longish unusual name (ie not a dictionary word), added some numbers and special characters that I could remember, and thought that would be sufficient. Well now I don't believe that's enough, so I'll go through that ball ache. I'll absolutely have to write them down, which is a no-no in my mind, so that will then go in the safe.
So two questions:
1. What can I expect in terms of the attacker's next steps?
2. What else can I do to protect myself?
Cheers!
1. My employer informed me that someone (unknown) filed an unemployment claim with my state (Tennessee) and when they verified the last day of work, realized it was fraudulent when told "he still works here".
2. A credit card I have has a monitoring feature, and I got a notification that my Social Security number has appeared on the dark web.
3. Yesterday, I received a bank statement for an account I don't have/didn't open, with a bank I have no other business with. I used to be a customer, but not for 5 years or more.
The bank statement looked pukka, so I googled the phone number of the bank (a very large one), and called in, rather than call the number on the statement, in case that was a scam. It turns out the account is genuine, and was opened around the time of the unemployment claim, although I don't know for sure the two are connected.
What can I expect as the next steps on the part of the attacker? Curiously, the account had $0 in it. No attempt to obtain actual credit so far, so I wonder if the account was to be used to have the unemployment paid in. Or perhaps there's another stage to the attack yet to come.
Here's what I've done so far:
Reported the unemployment fraud to the Police/Sheriff, and got a case number. I don't expect them to investigate though.
Had the bank cancel the account.
It looks as if the bad guys have:
My name (but not middle name)
My address
My email address (one of them)
My SSN
I think all I can do now is:
Change all my passwords and PINs on financial sites to unique, long crypto type ones that Safari suggests. I've been resistant to doing that, because of usability concerns. I chose a longish unusual name (ie not a dictionary word), added some numbers and special characters that I could remember, and thought that would be sufficient. Well now I don't believe that's enough, so I'll go through that ball ache. I'll absolutely have to write them down, which is a no-no in my mind, so that will then go in the safe.
So two questions:
1. What can I expect in terms of the attacker's next steps?
2. What else can I do to protect myself?
Cheers!
