Identity Theft Victim #?
If nothing else, try to learn from this particular experience, and if you would like to contact us for help in any situations such as these, we may have some ideas... as we have probably officially become experts in the "defensive field" of personal and more importantly "www" protection.
First of all, the reasons that we have chosen to write about these particular experiences are three-fold.
- 1. We know others will open their eyes a little more to what negative power the internet does indeed contain.
- 2. We feel a need to express this information to our visitors as people may be suprised, but operating a very busy dot com can be an extremely lonely business once you do realize who you can trust - which is almost no one! We may have a support network, but there are many "www" enthusiasts out there who probably feel they have no where to turn.
- 3. And we know there are many others that are very afraid of really talking about their own victimization, and what the "powers that be" might do to their On-line existence, if they were to "spill the beans".
We have suffered from the hands of these random?...or not so random criminals, in so many ways that it just might make your head spin! We are only going to talk about one here, as we would need to write a novel to touch on all the issues we have faced.
First of all, quite a few years ago...long before we knew anything about the Internet, we thought we would try our hand at selling some old baseball cards on the Internet...after all, so many people seemed to have good experiences that we knew we better "try" this thing out.
So we set up an account with the most popular Online marketplace...I am sure you all know it; and we uploaded our little pictures of a couple hockey and baseball cards. I am not sure how long the auction was supposed to be open for, but I am assuming it was 10 days or so.
Within that time frame we did experience some interest, possibly making $5-10, but all-in-all, pretty much left our auction experience with a little more knowledge, which was good.(If we wanted to come back and try it again)
Anyway, we just left things as they were once we were all done, assuming that our account would probably expire in a short time, and that would be that. Much to our suprise, however, after a few years some very disturbing news came to surface.
Just last summer, we were sent a "collection notice" from a collection company representing ebay, that stated that we owed them over $600 in auction fees? What?
Right away, we tried to get ahold of someone from ebay who could shed some light on this, but you can all probably imagine this new task at hand. If it wasn't for the "tracking down someone" knowledge that we had aquired over the last several years, we still might be wondering what is going on.
Anyway, initially, we were told from ebay that a person had used that old account to run several auctions in our name...leaving ebay and us with this pleasant bill.(A bill of $600+ in commissions must have been a reasonably large auction.)
Then, after having to contact ebay several times to rectify this (more hassle than you would expect), we were finally told that yes, now they know it was not us, and we do not owe them any money. whew!...so we thought.
Once again, however, a couple of months later we received another "collection notice" from one of these pleasant collection companies. This time, of course an "urgent demand" on behalf of ebay.
We had to "pay them the $600+" or face legal actions.
...What now? (In addition, of course, the envelope was never sealed so anyone who wanted to, would have access to read them...a tactic apparently made popular among many of the shady "collection" organizations that prey on those suffering financial hardships)
In an honest effort to deal with this once again, we contacted the collection agency this time, first, as that was apparently what this "legal document" had instructed us to do. Now, I don't know if you have ever had the fortunate experience of talking to these people, but this was exactly how it went for me during that call....
They picked up, and I told them what it was regarding. There was some delay, and then they asked me to hold while I was "transferred to someone else". Then, another person picked up...I told them what this was regarding, and that I knew it was supposed to be handled by ebay and that they should contact ebay to confirm. Then the person asked me to hold once more...I heard a familiar click...(they had obviously placed me on their speaker phone)...I could now hear everyone in the background.
They asked me once again, what "my problem" was (not in the tone that I expected) and I explained to them that I was a victim of identity theft, and that ebay was aware of the truth. I asked them to contact ebay to confirm, as they were "representing them".
There was a lot of laughter on their end...as if this was amusing...and they said exactly, "that is your problem"...."I don't care...it is your credit rating, your problem...you have to pay us the $600 or it will reck your credit rating". Of course I said that this would mean that they are trying to collect money on false pretenses, and again all I heard was laughter before they hung up on me.
Bitter...yes, I am not alone in being bitter in this regard!...not only because of what happened, but that it was a complete suprise, and that we were really very suprised at how unhelpful anyone would really be. And then to be treated like the joke of the day when we try to handle this properly....?
After this, we contacted the RCMP, and Canada's Privacy Commissioner to explain our situation. Finally, a little support. The particular RCMP officer offered his assistance if this matter elevated any further, but also said that they were still relatively ill-equipped to deal with matters such as these. I said that I know that the Internet does operate like the "Wild West", and he agreed.
My next step, was to go back to ebay, now under the direction of this officer, and ask for a "letter" that would show that this issue was resolved. Once I found the person that I needed to contact, I did talk to them, but now they stated that I was a "random victim", and that there would be no way for me to find out who it was exactly that forced this upon me. I'll let you come to your own conclusions on that, but I will say that this particular statement doesn't do much for my feelings of security in the future.
As for this incidents' resolve...I will say that ebay appeared to have handled it. They wrote in their letter that this particular case would not pop up again, and that the particular collection agency would not contact me again on ebay's behalf.
For now, that is all we will say about that particular incident. Please take notice below of some obvious signs that may have been leading up to this.
Events we did notice leading up to this incident..
- Certain mail documents that came to us were never sealed or were ripped open before my own hands touched them. We did contact the postal authorities on three occassions, and they did respond within their power. There is much more to this, but we will not discuss it here.
- In the past(many years ago), we were quite careless about what message boards or memberships that we disclosed information to. If you trade stocks, talk on any message board, or have signed up for any type of membership assume that everything you typed into your profile to be public.(that is really the only way to make yourself careful)
- If you operate a ".com" expect to pay a price for progress. Most webmasters will tell you that you can easily become a victim of your own success. We can tell you that having thousands of daily visitors to a site will bring its' share of hassles that can easily take you completely away from your cause if you are not careful. For those webmasters out there...make sure you have root level access to everything. The newest services that we offer were born as a result of our own need to obtain complete administrative control, of which we know our partners and visitors will appreciate.
We hope it doesn't happen to you!
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Something else to remember... "Some times it might serve you better to play Possum". Often, a predator of any kind will adjust their level according to what is perceived as your level of defense. In the digital world anyway, there are quite a number of ways to allow those enough access to identify themselves, but not enough access to harm you. You can expect this to be followed up by other incidents we have experienced, so keep checking for more! Soon we will bring you some ".com" experiences that we hope will help you take that second look into "www" education before you leap head over heels into the land of the "Wild West". The Internet has indeed become quite a sub-culture that is much more deceiving than straight forward. If you are a ".com" newbie, you will want to make sure that you do not become prey before your "fifteen minutes" are up! If you or your business has not yet been a victim of...
...you probably have just not been around long enough, or you just haven't realized it yet. Make sure you are not leaving the responsibility of your ".com" existence up to those who may not offer your site all the security that you should expect. Our own victimization has also fueled us to add solutions in the web site hosting field to our services, as we now know how so many providers are falling far short. While we offer state-of-the-art solutions (like so many others), we also know that most people are well aware that technology far exceeds what we can challenge it to, making all that talk about "fancy servers" and the most "Mbits, gigs, megs and pipes" kind of irrelevant.(eg: would you need a 2000hp Drag Racing car to go 2 blocks to go to the grocery store?...probably over-doing it a little, right?) It is important to offer the most up-to-date hardware and software of course, but lacking in care towards something as simple as handing over an FTP password to an unkown user are the things that have real-World damaging potential. Whether you make a mistake is one thing, but we all have to give up some responsibility to someone - whether it is our web site host, our Internet service provider, a firewall program, etc.; it is vitally important for you to be equipped with all the tools that offer root-level prevention and that can also inform you when one of these systems may not be holding up their end of the bargain. Whether you have called your local Internet support line lately, or provided any personal information to a "customer service" rep for a multi-billion dollar search engine, or software company, you have to realize that it is just another human being on the other end of that line, and the accountability offered to you really is at that single persons total discretion.
With my knowledge today, I would have to say, unfortunately, that the "good guys" are still losing the battle heavily, and that any talk of things getting better very soon, is probably a little desperate to say, at best. The "cash cow powers that be" would like you to believe otherwise, but it is just simply impossible to properly govern the World Wide Web as of yet. *Being that there are more web pages Online than there probably are people on this planet... the Internet has quickly become somewhat of an entire unique planet of its' own. What really would it cost us to govern a "digital" planet properly? Are we prepared for the real price that we may have to pay to keep all that is good about "surfing" the Web? In an article soon to be written, we will tell you how the Internet is "evolving"...following the "all mighty dollar" which many webmasters will agree is the wrong direction. There are becoming less and less search engines like Google, that can't be "bought". Others, that are following the $$ route will lead us to the disappearance of the "information age" and the takeover of the "infomercial age" that preys upon humanity's weaknesses.
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