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An Online Fraud Victim
The nature of my business causes me to spend a lot of time on the
Internet; as a result, I often sign up for newsletters and post comments
on public forums. Little did I know that simply putting my email address
out on the Web would cause me such grief.
What happened was that someone took my personalized email address and then
looked up the Whois information associated with my domain name to make
purchases online. How did they do that? Well, some underhanded person
(or persons) figured out a credit card company's algorithm for issuing
card numbers. So they generated a credit card number and then used it in
conjunction with the personal information they obtained from my Whois
record. When they made the purchases online, all the online store saw was
an apparently good card number associated with accurate card holder
information. The result: the online store processed the order. (Of
course, those thieves had the goods shipped to a PO Box).
Not long after, I began to receive phone calls from different merchants
regarding purchases made on their site. I didn't know what was going on,
and was very confused as to how these merchants had all my personal
information. Luckily, I quickly figured out the cause of my identity
theft, and immediately made all my domains private. I continue to surf
the web and post on public forums; but at least now, I know my postings
won't come back to hurt me.
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