one of these e-mails, and didn't have the forethought to ask anyone the same question, even though she thought it 'seemed a little fishy'. The next day her bank called her (I think it was a combined paypal/eBay thing) saying that they had suspended her credit card because of presumed fraudulent charges made in Hong Kong. Upon my advice she immediately called the 3 credit bureaus and put a fraud alert on her account.

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but with everything from your home equity loans, car insurance, and even some employment based on your credit report nowadays, identity theft is nasty business. And even if your identity gets stolen, things can take YEARS to clean up and get removed from your credit report.

The simple response is this: ignore/delete/report anything that asks for any kind of personal information that comes through your e-mail, no matter how legitimate it looks. As you can see from this message, you can tell most fraudulent sources by their attempt to create a false sense of urgency (i.e., your account will be terminated in 24 hours, etc.). If whoever really needs to get ahold of you, they will eventually do so via regular mail. I would even be cautious about giving such information over the telephone, unless I had initiated the call.

Just the thoughts of a lowly bank examiner who unfortunately sees this kind of stuff every day.

Brent J. Jensen
R-6335
orbis non sufficit