Paul Jay's Ponderings

Seems my mom has got suckered by a place that has stuff about anti-phishing and also provides a "free credit report" on their website. She went there after seeing a banner ad at who knows where. (Because she follows every stupid link her friends send her, she's old and gullible like that.) Apparently what privacymatters.com doesn't tell you is that they use the number you give for the free credit report to run up a half dozen different spurious charges on your acct. (They're all Connecticut based, wait - what business is out of Connecticut along with the other random charges? Yeah, thought so!) Sounds pretty much like a scam itself, doesn't it? Just thought I'd pass the word.

-----quick edit-----
Did some googling. Apparently my mom wasn't the only one to get hit by this scam. Being that the message dates to 2006, I wonder how many other victims there are.

Labels: free credit, phish, privacymatters, scam