Monday, February 13, 2006

Holy Shit - It Was, In Fact, A Scam

I applied for an online job through Craigslist. Yes, yes I did. I should have known better. I am not an internet n00b, or I thought I wasn't. Weeeellll, to make a long story short, after I had filled in the (extremely detailed and elaborate) application and sent it off, I started getting odd feelings about this job, although noone had asked me for any financial information. The application did, however, ask for my SS# and even though I thought to myself, I shouldn't fill that in, I should put down Available Upon Hire or something, like a smart person, I fucking filled it in & sent it off. Then I got a reply saying I was hired, but something wasn't ringing true, so I never replied to it: instead, I did some googling and question asking. Then, if you will scroll down two posts on this blog and click on the comment on the Snow post (the one with the really incredibly brilliant picture of Theo on it, yes that one) you will see that I was not the only person who had become concerned about this job scam.

So I sent my commenter a long email detailing my experiences with this whole thing and then, about 10 minutes ago, I got a very long email from someone else and I will give you a synopsis: the whole thing is a total scam, go down to the local police and report it so that the Las Vegas police have enough leverage to go seize the scammer's computer which contains personal information about you. It is true, the scammer has my name, address, DOB and social security number. So I should be concerned, and I am. It is also, however, true that I filed for bankruptcy last summer and thus it is unlikely that anyone is going to issue a credit card in my name: let's face it, my identity is kind of useless. My question, though, to you my loyal readers is this: should I go down to the cops anyway? Just in case?

Damn. I feel like such a total idiot.

Update: I forwarded the email to a friend of mine who is a retired cop. He told me not to bother going to the Asheville police, because there is enough information out there now where my adding to it won't make any difference. I called Equifax & put a fraud alert on my credit record, as was suggested by yet another email I got. This has all been very exciting but I could probably have lived without it.

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