Julie was preparing to participate in a 5K run downtown when she received a message from her neighbor saying she had received her Facebook friend request and she’d been instant messaging her but had received no response. The neighbor’s text message asked why.
Julie had a very good reason why – she doesn’t have a Facebook account.
She called her neighbor and relayed that fact, but her neighbor responded by saying, “Well, I’m looking at your page. There’s even a profile picture of you from last Christmas. I got a message from you asking for money.”
Julie had received a text message earlier that morning stating that her personal e-mail address had been removed and a new e-mail address had been created. About 30 minutes later, she received an e-mail message on her cell phone from her new Yahoo e-mail account.
The e-mail her friend had received said that Julie and her husband, along with their two children, were traveling in Ireland and had been robbed. They had nothing left but their passports, they couldn’t pay their hotel bill, and they had no money to fly home. The e-mail asked Julie’s friends, whose addresses had been accessed through her Yahoo account, to send her money to help the family return home.
Of course the story was a scam. But that wasn’t even the scary part. The scary part was that several of Julie’s friends were preparing to wire her money immediately.
The FBI calls this type of identity theft social engineering. This means someone uses a person’s personal information gained through hacking into the social sites they use to steal not only their identity but their money as well.
Julie was fortunate. She discovered the scam early on and was able to quickly shut down her personal e-mail accounts, saving herself and her friends’ wallets. If Julie hadn’t been able to stop this scam early, she could have faced months or even years spent trying to recover her good name.
But LifeLock customers know that their information is safe. LifeLock provides 24/7 customer support and monitoring. So if something happens, those customers know right away.
That makes life – and protecting your valuable personal information – a whole lot less scary.
