32
submitted 2 months ago by vortexal@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

I haven't opened the email, I'm just looking at the preview that gmail provides and it contains the name of my email with the first character missing and most of my phone number, like I stated in the title of my post. How concerned, if at all, should I be and is there anything I should be doing?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] lemmefixdat4u@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago

There are plenty of companies that will sell your name, email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, marital status, and relative's names. They obtain the information from publicly sold databases. I had access to one that had all that, plus the registration info for the car I drive, my estimated income, my military record, my driving record, my political party preference, and pictures of my home that had been on the realtor's website.

The scary one was when a phone center employee in the Philippines stole my wife's debit card number and then did two big Western Union MoneyGram transfers to a couple of Filipino men. That means bad actors have access to the credit companies' databases from which Western Union draws their proof of identity questions, like who holds your mortgage, where you lived when you were 10, and the make/model of your first vehicle.

If you're well-off enough to be a financial fraud target, paying a company for identity theft protection is probably well worth it. Put fraud alerts in with all the major credit bureaus too. That usually stops identity thieves from accessing your credit. If you use 2FA with your phone, make sure your telecom provider will not transfer your number to a new device without in-person authorization and authentication.

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 months ago

Use a 2FA app, not SMS. SIM swaps are easy to do to take over your accounts and change your passwords. An app on your phone renders this useless.

this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
32 points (97.1% liked)

Asklemmy

43728 readers
2441 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS