My wife had a brain fart tonight and responded to a fake PayPal email and gave up some important info. She gave her credit card number and pin code. She swears she did not give her social security number or bank account info. The only info she gave was for that card and our address. We figured it out about 15 minutes after she did so and she immediately called and canceled her credit card. Is there anything else she needs to do or be aware of? She's been dabbling in ebay lately and after she finished surfing on the net I warned her about fake PayPal scams and that's when she realized what she had just done.
There's really nothing else you can do. I would just get a new account instead of adding a new credit card. But yeah, cancelling that credit card probably saved you a lot of trouble in the future.
You should put fraud protection on all of your credit and bank cards. You can also call all major credit bureaus and have them tell you if anyone tries to open up a line of credit in your name. Check out the FTC Identity theft site here: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft/
If she "logged on" this fake paypal site, they have your paypal password so change your password. Same for ebay. Basically anything she "logged onto" was stealling her password(s). You also will want to watch or cancel credit cards or bank accounts that are tied to that paypal account in case they got to them before you changed your password.
Thanks. Yes, she changed her ebay password as well. The fraud protection is a good idea. We'll do that today.
If she's like most people, she uses the same password for everything. If she uses the same password for PayPal as for other things, like email, online banking, etc., you basically have to go change every password in the world or risk some kind of breach. If you care.
maybe you want to sign up for one of those fraud protection sites that will monitor all your stuff and everything.. just for a year or something, to make sure? if you're feeling paranoid at all anyway
those things are annoying... i signed up for that when my ss card, license and credit cards were stolen... i couldnt make some purchases without calling up the bank company and letting em know that i wasa bout to...
You will need to have her contact the three credit agencies to make sure that noone opens up any new accounts in her name. the warning lasts for 90 days at which time you can choose to extend it, if not it will auto expire. It is extremely important that you first and foremost notify the credit agencies because once a couple of new accounts are opeend up by the scammers, it wil take years sometimes to fix it. The three credit agencies are: Equifax Credit Bureau (800) 685-1111 Experian (888) 397-3742 Trans Union (800) 888-4213
The address is gone - you can't undo that, but I would've called the credit card company immediately. The next thing I'd do is get some credit monitoring service like identityguard.com. But first... contact the credit card company.
