Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
Email Scams, Telemarketing, and Identity Theft
From: Sam Golden <samsonspecial () gmail com>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:02:58 -0400
I know this is off topic, and probably not quite as juicy as SCADA, but it points to what I fear may be a growing problem. I have had my home phone number in the National Do Not Call Registry, https://www.donotcall.gov/, since it's inception and I have received few if any telemarketing phone calls. Within the last week, however, I have received more than a dozen calls. After brushing the first few off, I became curious and started to ask the callers why they were calling me. The results were startling. Each of the first three callers I asked stated that they had received an email from me requesting that they call me. Knowing that I hadn't done so, I asked for the email address. They stated they received an email from Goldensaaaa () gmail com. This apparently legitimizes their calling me. Now, while telemarketing is annoying, it started me thinking about the implications. Anyone can search various public archives such as 411.com and find a phone number for a name. Anyone can create a gmail account as long as they can read the "captcha". Is some "evil" telemarketing company hiring lots of people to generate lots of mail accounts and then offer these to faux-legitimize telemarketing phone calls? It doesn't stop here, however, the next call I received was the result, so the caller said, of "me" requesting information from a web form on their web site. Not true! Is this the result of an "evil" telemarketing scheme as well? I just signed up for credit monitoring as I suspect I will need this next. Should I be paranoid? Regards, Sam
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- Email Scams, Telemarketing, and Identity Theft Sam Golden (Apr 22)