Don't swipe my account!!!

This morning I woke to a dumb situation. In the middle of the night someone hijacked my ebay and paypal account and purchased a $886 laptop computer with it all. Of course Vladimiras Guscinas from Lithuania made sure to change the shipping address so it would be sent to him. That swiper!

I contacted Paypal and Ebay so they would cancel the transaction and refund the money to my paypal account.

Because he used my email account, the correspondence was emailed to me. He deleted them out of my inbox (but didn't delete them out of the trash) but because it was an account that I seldom use, I have all my mail forwarded to my well-used email account - so I did receive all the transaction information. Luckily I had it forwarded because otherwise I wouldn't have known about it.

To-Do this morning: change all my passwords and usernames on my online accounts. I also put a fraud alert on my credit report just in case something else happens with this nut.

Isn't that all so scary! I want to feel like my information is safe. It's very upsetting to have my accounts hijacked.

Oh - the insanity of our society!!!

I was thinking about my passwords and realized I needed to make sure I didn't use the same password for all my online accounts. So I am switching my accounts to various stronger passwords.

Here are tips for creating a strong password:

A strong password is a password that meets the following guidelines:

Be seven or fourteen characters long, due to the way in which encryption works. For obvious reasons, fourteen characters are preferable.
Contain both uppercase and lowercase letters.
Contain numbers.
Contain symbols, such as ` ! " ? $ ? % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = { [ } ] : ; @ ' ~ # \ < , > . ? /
Contain a symbol in the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth position (due to the way in which encryption works).
Not resemble any of your previous passwords.
Not be your name, your friend's or family member's name, or your login.
Not be a dictionary word or common name.


Here are some tips that I found for preventing identity theft:

1. Buy a shredder: Shredding all your personal information before tossing it in the trash will prevent dumpster divers from fishing out your pre-approved credit card offers.

2. Change your passwords monthly: Do you bank online? Or store personal information on your laptop? If so, it would be wise to change your password at least once a month and try to select passwords that will not be obvious to potential hackers (birthday, anniversary, pet name, etc.).

3. Freeze your credit: If your data has been breached (electronically or via dumpster divers), there is not much an identity thief can do if your credit has been frozen... there is no way someone can open a line of credit (credit cards, house/car loans, etc) without access to your credit information, and you can say good-bye to those pesky and potentially dangerous pre-approved credit card offers.

4. Beware of phishing scams: Scam artists "phish" for victims by pretending to be banks, stores or government agencies. They do this over the phone, in emails and in the regular mail. Don't give out your personal information, unless you made the contact. Don't respond to a request to verify your account number or password. Legitimate companies do not request this kind of information in this way.

5. Protect your computer from spyware and viruses: Spyware programs can collect many different types of personal information about you like passwords and credit card numbers. Always use firewall, virus and spyware protection software that you update regularly like Norton Internet Security 2006. Only download free software from sites you know and trust.


Another issue regarding identity theft is where to keep important papers such as social security cards and birth certificates. One of my friends in Tennessee had all those documents locked in a safe under her bed. Some thiefs broke into her house and just took the entire box. So that is another thing to think about with identity theft - is protecting the papers we have.

sigh... too bad we have to deal with all this.