Identity Theft Emails

Have you been a victim of Identity Theft? You may never know, someone on the Internet may already been impersonating you and has been using your identity to cover up their dirty schemes. You may wonder, how did they manage to obtain your information? I'll explain how..

Identity Thief by definition is a fraudulent act that involves stealing money or getting other benefits by pretending to be someone else. Of course, if you were the victim, you could suffer various consequences as you will be held responsible for the perpetrator's actions.

But how do these identity thieves manage to obtain your information? Well, unfortunately, there are a lot of ways, but I will be focusing on one major scheme commonly used by these idiots.. Spam Emails!

The Method

Most identity thieves steal identity through emails, but since it's difficult to email everyone one by one, they use robots to crawl the web, steal email addresses, and use robots to mail everyone automatically. Most email services had already device a way to get rid of such emails by filtering them, but sometimes, some of these manage to land on your Inbox. Eventually, some users who are not aware of it, may read it.. This is what it contains.. See example below..

Click on picture to enlarge

It usually contains.. the "wow, you win the online lottery" message. Other's even pretend to be lawyers and asks you to be the beneficiary of an inheritance. Other's still asks you to become a business associate. Whatever the scam message.. they always ask you to give them your Personal Information.

Note that there is no online lottery that is based on email addresses and is conducted automatically. If you haven't participated it, do not act so greedy of claiming the reward even if the prizes are tempting. Only a spam robot would steal email ads, and only a scammer would conduct such drawings, moreover, there is no prize.. unless, you can consider getting your identity stolen a prize.

As for the lawyer-beneficiary scheme, no one's stupid enough to just make you inherit a load of wealth. If someone dies, and has no kin, his/her fortune will usually be escheated to the treasury of a particular country, where the decease person left his/her wealth, of course, this depends on the law governing such cases, but by any means, do not act as the beneficiary when you don't even know the decease person. If you submit your information to claim such wealth, you'll surely inherit the crime of the identity thief.

Other methods include advertising your profile on forums, social networking sites, etc. Doing this will certainly make the thieve's work much easier.

Prevention

To prevent your identity stolen, as a golden rule, always never give your personal information to strangers or any unauthorized agent. Do not register your personal information on unregistered or unsecured sites, most especially on scam sites. Do not loiter your email ad on just any sites, this will help spam robots steal your account, and increases your chances of receiving the fraudulent email.