The most rewarding places for ID theft online!

The saying ‘A fool is born every minute’ comes true online. But then, did you know the difference between being intelligent and being wise? An intelligent person learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from other people’s mistakes; and most of the people on the internet are extremely intelligent! There are literally thousands of forums and blogs where ‘intelligent’ people post their stories of agony, but then we are ‘intelligent’ too, aren’t we?

ID theft is the topic we are speaking of today, and there are places which have tremendous potential for ID theft. They have been around for years now, but still are as fertile as they were when they started out. Here are the ones which are most popular – for ID thieves, that is.

• ‘Work from home’ sites

These are the most obvious choice, and though there have been tens of thousands of scams unearthed online, still they are as fertile as they were when the concept was invented. How do you know if they might be ID thieves? Firstly, they look ‘fake’. The testimonials, the promise of money, everything looks fake. Posting ads does not pay you $20,000 every week! All those checks are photoshop-ed. Never ever give out details on those sites. If you are truly interested, ask for more information, and do not give out your actual email id either. Create one, or use one that is not your primary email.

• Social Networking spoofs

There are several very well made social networking sites online, and they have made the internet a fabulous place to be in. However, there are thousands of so-called social networking sites which have been created with the sole intention of getting IDs of people in order to sell them to the highest bidder. Do not join if you do not have friends already registered. Ask them if they have been receiving unsolicited mail. If yes, stay away! Specifically do not register with your sensitive information onto a ‘personals’ site.

• Unsolicited links in email

This remains one of the most rewarding ways of ID theft for a serious hacker. If you have a link in an email (whether junk or not), which you have not solicited, do not click on them if they run a script. Same with links inside a website. Do not click on links that want you to run scripts.

There are several more places where ID theft is prevalent, but these are the ones which are most rewarding for an ID thief. As a sensible customer, these are the ones which you need to be careful about.

We hope that you are a ‘wise’ person online!