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Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Ongoing Suspected Identity Theft?
njnnja writes: My wife receives periodic emails (about once every other month) from a cable company that is not in our service area that purport to confirm that she has made changes to her account, such as re-setting her password. Her email address is not a common one so we do not believe that it is someone accidentally using it; rather, we believe that an identity thief is subscribing to cable services intentionally using her name and email address.
Whenever we have gotten an email we have called the cable company, been forwarded to their security department, and we are assured that her social security number is not being used and that they will clear her name and email address out of their system. Yet a few weeks later we get another email. Our concern is that when the cable company goes after my wife for the unpaid balance on the account I am sure that neither they nor a collection agency will care much that it's not her social security number — it's her name and they will demand she pays.
We have a very strong password (long, completely random string of chars, nums, and symbols) and 2-factor authentication on the email account so we are fairly certain that no one is currently hacking into her email (at least, it's not worth it for however many thousands of dollars they can actually steal off this scam), But we think that the cable company should be doing more to not be complicit in an attempted identity theft. We have made it clear that we don't live in the area they cover so we should not have an account, but the fact that they keep setting up an account in her name means that they just don't care. Which is fine; I don't expect a cable company to care that they inconvenience us, but I would like to know if there is any way that we can make them care about it (liability, regulations, etc). I know YANAL but does anyone have any ideas about how to handle this? Thanks. Have a question for Slashdot's readers? Take a look at other recent questions first to see if someone else has had a similar question. And if not, ask away! The more details and context you include, the more likely your question will be selected.
Whenever we have gotten an email we have called the cable company, been forwarded to their security department, and we are assured that her social security number is not being used and that they will clear her name and email address out of their system. Yet a few weeks later we get another email. Our concern is that when the cable company goes after my wife for the unpaid balance on the account I am sure that neither they nor a collection agency will care much that it's not her social security number — it's her name and they will demand she pays.
We have a very strong password (long, completely random string of chars, nums, and symbols) and 2-factor authentication on the email account so we are fairly certain that no one is currently hacking into her email (at least, it's not worth it for however many thousands of dollars they can actually steal off this scam), But we think that the cable company should be doing more to not be complicit in an attempted identity theft. We have made it clear that we don't live in the area they cover so we should not have an account, but the fact that they keep setting up an account in her name means that they just don't care. Which is fine; I don't expect a cable company to care that they inconvenience us, but I would like to know if there is any way that we can make them care about it (liability, regulations, etc). I know YANAL but does anyone have any ideas about how to handle this? Thanks. Have a question for Slashdot's readers? Take a look at other recent questions first to see if someone else has had a similar question. And if not, ask away! The more details and context you include, the more likely your question will be selected.
Is it addressed to her name or her email address? If just the latter, than who cares, add it to the spam filter. Or recover the login information and unsubscribe the person from all their services.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I've never heard of a company being able to do this. If they don't have your wife's SSN or mailing address, how would they bill you (her) for service? I'm not sold on this being intentional identity theft - are you seeing any other signs of this happening? The last time my info was compromised I saw plenty of other activity that indicated it happened. This seems like a strange case of mistaken identity from my vantage point.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That which can be explained by a cable company's incompetence.
If it's ONLY the one cable company that is using her name I'd say the problem here is with that cable company. I'd get on the local (to them) news with how little they care about dealing with identity issues. Bet the problem goes away after that. Have you run a credit report to confirm there isn't anything else odd? It seems unlikely that her ID would be used only for cable...
K Man
Your next stop at this point should be the regulators for the state where the cable company is operating. File a complaint with them. You may also want to file a complaint with your own state's regulators.
Most public utilities, cable, electric, telephone are hypersensitive to complaints filed with the regulators, even if it doesn't show publicly, because it affects the rates they can charge.
Good luck!
If all possible, look at all the headers in the email to verify that it truly is coming from that cable company. Also, when you call the company, do they really have an account for her?
Is anyone living in the cable company's service area who has your wife's first and last name? It is generally easier to be certain of a "yes" than a "no" answer on this, of course, but it is worth checking for if you haven't already. I'm not sold on this being intentional fraud, as it is generally not worth the effort to steal someone's identity just to get free cable for a couple months.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Which is easier to believe: That a sophisticated criminal organization is involved in an ongoing plot to usurp your wife's identity and destroy her credit, or that the local cable company is run by a a bunch of half-wits who couldn't figure out how to cancel an account or correct false customer information if their jobs depended on it?
Or, perhaps that Slashdot is a good source for legal advice?
Record your conversations with the cable company. If they do something stupid, like put things in credit reports, you can sue them.
But so far nothing seemed to have happened.
Are you sure that the cable company in question is a legitimate business and not just a scam hoping that you call them to be 'forwarded to their security department' so they can pull personal information from you... ya know, to make sure that you "aren't being billed anything". (sounds like a reasonable hook, to me)
Otherwise I'd imagine using someone else's name and e-mail address is not in any way indicative of a contract and they wouldn't be able to prove anything to go after you, personally.
Her email address is not a common one so we do not believe that it is someone accidentally using it; rather, we believe that an identity thief is subscribing to cable services intentionally using her name and email address.
Or someone just happened to use a similar email address and misstyped theirs. Are you actually getting emails regarding unpaid bills for the cable company, or is it just simple account-type stuff like changing passwords? Or charges attempting to be made against any of your credit cards? If you are getting emails once a month, it sounds to me like someone put in the wrong email and when they go to pay it online they change the password because they can't log in. And even if there was an unpaid balance, the first thing they would do is send the bills to the physical address they have on file or to the holder of the card that was used to intially set up service, which is also where any collections would likely start.
Hell, 10 years ago I used to get recordings on my phone that someone had overdue movies at Blockbuster. I didn't immediately assume someone was using my identity to steal movies from them in some criminal enterprise, I just figured they had put in a wrong number.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I've had some or multiple asshats do this several times.
I'm not sure why he can't get his email address right, but it's pretty clear this would stop if the offending organizations used a validation scheme.
Regardless, an incorrectly used email address doesn't quite quantify as identity theft. Hell, I'm not sure why you would think the cable bill would be remotely in your name. You see, utilities are tied to a physical address and it would fairly straight forward to rule out foul play.
Last person that decided they would use my email address for their xbox account found out why that was a really bad idea. At least, I hope by now they have called msft to have their account password reset and their email address set to something more tangible then 'stopusingmyemail.' I have to assume they wanted me to manage their account since they gave me unrestricted access to it and supplied my email address for said management. I might have been wrong, but the notifications have stopped.
It happens to me all the time, I have a relatively common Gmail address using my first initial and last name. I frequently get misdirected email from a variety of vendors where someone gave them my email address by mistake. I used to try to contact the merchant and tell them, but they rarely respond intelligently (usually they tell me to log on to my account and change the address... duh, I don't have an account!). So now I usually just flag them as spam and ignore them.
Comcast has been sending me monthly bill notifications for someone else's account for over a year, I emailed them, but they told me to call and I didn't feel like calling, so I've been ignoring it.
Some guy keeps sending me his flight reservations, I could screw with him and cancel his flights online or maybe keep changing his seat to put him next to the bathroom.
One guy said he was going to sue me for stealing his email address when I told him that he's using the wrong address, he swore that he'd been using that address for 5 years and that I stole it from him.
Are you familiar with the recent judgement against Time Warner Cable over a very similar matter?
we are assured that her social security number is not being used and that they will clear her name and email address out of their system. Yet a few weeks later we get another email.
Then they are not clearing it out: they are either incompetent or lying. Consider having a lawyer draft a letter referencing this recent judgement. That might help.
My wife has had this happen to her too. Someone used her e-mail address when signing up for their Comcast account and Comcast kept e-mailing my wife with account updates. (We're not in a Comcast area.) She called and they essentially said there was nothing they could do since she wasn't the account holder. They needed the account holder's permission to change the e-mail that was going to my wife. The same account holder who put in my wife's e-mail address in the first place. (I believe they eventually contacted the person and sorted the issue out, but she still gets the occasional e-mail when the person again puts my wife's e-mail address into a system.)
All this being said, I wouldn't say that "has the wrong e-mail address in the system" is Identity Theft. You're getting pestered with e-mails, sure, but they aren't impacting your credit report, charging you for the other person's service, or anything else. As a victim of Identity theft myself (my name/SSN/DOB/address were used to open a credit card in my name), it takes a lot more than "put your e-mail address in the system" to qualify.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This one is simple: steal someone else's identity. The last one left without an identity loses and we shun them.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
A Hotmail account I signed up for in 1996 or 1997 is often used as a throw-away e-mail by idiots all the time.
Often, I will log in to the service they used my address for, and reset the password and take it over, just to let it sit.
If morons are dumb enough to use my e-mail, then they should not have access to whatever service they signed up for.
One time, a "sugardaddy.com" account used my e-mail, and I took it over, changing the profile pics to some handy images from "faces of meth" and spicing up the profile. Sadly, a drug-addicted, STD carrying woman still sparks a lot of interest, apparently, among "sugar daddies"
My wife has a common first and last name... her email address is her first name and last name @gmail... She gets everything from electric bills to HOME MORTGAGE CLOSING PAPERS for other people. When she emails back and explains that this is not that person's email address... the idiots become hostile and accuse her of being a hacker.
Now any time she gets a bill for any service, her first step is to recover the password, then schedule service disconnect. Seems harsh, but it is the only way. She has dealt with this for years... Hell if she were malicious, she has the account balance, social security number, bank account numbers, credit history, and/or University staff login credentials for half a dozen people who have targeted her for "reverse identity theft." No matter how much she begs them to stop.
Oh by the way... other woman who lives in NYC, 5 guys burgers emailed and said your order is ready for pick-up.... Maybe eating burgers and fries 6 times a week isn't the best for you though.
Are you certain the emails are from the cable company? A common scam is to send fake emails to convince you to give them your account info and passwords. Usually those scams are for bank accounts, but you never know -- especially since they're asking you to make a payment. Is the URL in the email the same as the cable company?
Another possibility is that someone entered her email address instead of their own when making their account.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
When people sign up for things using one of my email addresses, I simply recover the password through email, then login, cancel the account, change the password and move on.
There is a jackass in NYC who shares my name, and has signed up for things like Spotify and Netflix using a variation of my gmail address (minus the periods, which do not matter to gmail). I cancel everythng he orders using my email address.
It's a good idea to contact the credit reporting agencies and place a security freeze on your accounts. That prevents anyone from taking out loans etc using your personal information. You can temporarily lift the freeze for a particular company if you need to allow a credit check for your own purposes.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Just document your communications with the cable company, especially their security department. Always get a case / incident number from them in addition to the names of everyone who you talk to. Figure out what the legal rules are recording telephone conversations in your state and theirs and make recordings of your calls. Even if you do not have to notify them that you are recording (assuming you both are in "one party consent" states), do so anyway.
If you want to go the extra step, write up a summary letter after you contact them and include all of the information and let them know that you are retaining a copy for your files. Make sure to date it. Mail it to them and request a delivery receipt to keep in your files.
If it happens again, do the same thing again but include some additional verbiage about it being the second time that you have dealt with this with them. Explain that you are not doing business with them, do not ever intend to do business with them, and will not be held liable for the cost of any services that they provision with your wife's information. Keep a copy for your files and forget about it.
If a collection agency ever contacts you,
1. Send them a copy of your file and let them hash it out.
2. Hope and pray that they continue to pressure you for payment
3. ???
4. Sue them for fraud, plus attorney fees. (PROFIT)
I had a case a bit like this recently.
I started getting mails from a cellphone company (the one I actually use myself) which had nothing to do with me. Then I started getting bills emailed. The bills had the cellphone number and a postal address, I looked it up and rang their land line. It turned out I knew the person involved - he has the same name as me and works for the same company so we sometimes get each others mails at work. He had made a mistake when he supplied an email address. It took a couple of months to fix it. I would get an email and forward it to his address, he would complain to the cellphone company, I would complain to the cellphone company. Eventually he sent me a mail saying they had managed to send a bill to him rather than me.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
You need to do this at least once a year anyway:
Ask each of the three credit bureaus for your free credit report. You usually fill out a set of forms and they'll e-mail you a report. For each credit report:
My email provider forced me to use a minimum of 8 "characters" and at least 1 number as a password.
So as my password I chose: "Snow White and the 7 dwarves"
My policy is to never respond to emails that I receive if they are intended for other people. Here's why.
Back in 1998 I received an email intended for an attorney at a personal injury law firm. The firm's domain name is very similar to mine, the only difference was that they have a hyphen in their domain name and I don't. Being a good guy, I replied to the sender saying he had the wrong email address. That was a serious mistake.
I was accused by their office manager of hacking their emails. I told her that I don't control who sends email to my domain. She said I shouldn't open email not addressed to me, and the firm reported me to the US Attorney for their location for violating attorney/client privacy. Back then, the name, address and phone number of domain owners were always public so it was easy to discover my details.
The US Attorney passed the information to the FBI and I received a visit from two agents who were polite but computer clueless and somewhat concerned about what had happened. As I said, this was 1998 and the whole concept of malware and hacking was somewhat new and esoteric. I explained to the agents in detail what had happened, showed them my email setup and explained how email works. They thanked me and left saying they would be in touch. I haven't heard a word from either of them or anyone else about the complaint since.
However, this experience did change my attitude to incorrectly addressed email. I've received several emails for this law firm since then and I ignored them. These days a complaint of this nature would be ignored but why take the chance.
If it was a lawyer, you might want to report them to the relevant regulatory agency - or even tell him to sue them; he might as well get something out of the mess. But you did good to warn off the 20 yo...
Exactly. The response to the FBI should've been to invite them to ask the law firm why _they_ were violating attorney/client privilege by sending sensitive information to a third party.