Spam phone call

[woodsprite]

21. Well, in 2015, Experian (one of the credit bureaus) was breached and resulted

in 15 million ssn's getting out in the wild. That was only one breach, and there have been many, many more. Not all breaches contain the SSN, some may just be cc numbers, address, name, email or driver's license number. Since they wanted you to call, I suspect that the first thing they would ask you is to give them your SSN to "verify their records".

In 2013, where I work had a breach where 75,000 ssn's and other personal info was stolen. Anyone (student, staff, faculty, etc.) who ever collected a paycheck from us was automatically enrolled in a credit monitoring service for 3 years. We received a text/email if anything unusual came up and a report monthly of any activity. As soon as that rolled off someone was using my cc/banking info to open cell accounts and purchase phones. I didn't know anything about it until one of the accounts got put into collections because "I hadn't paid" the $1200 iPhone purchase. Got it straightened out, and locked my credit through all 3 credit bureaus. Of course, one of those 3 bureaus was Experian

Here's another scam, built around the Microsoft "service tech" call. "James" called our house (could barely understand him). Apparently the invoice for the help he gave me with my system hadn't been paid, and he was calling to get that straightened out. I could pay with a credit card and they wouldn't put it into collector's hands. Dipshit! If he had called my MIL, she probably would have given out her info and paid the "bill".