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What are some common examples of internet identity theft scams?

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Speaker: What are some common examples of Internet identity theft scams?

Linda Sherry: There are some common ways that these use the Internet to steal your steal your identity and a couple of those are spoofsites and phishing, which is, say, emails that are tempting to get your personal information out of you. So, spoofsites, for instance, if you are trying to go to your bank, Bank of America and you type in Bank of Amerrica, a lot of these spoofsites have actually taken these URL's, purchased these URL's, just so that they can trick you that way.

So, be very careful, bookmark your regular websites you go to and try not to -- so you don't go to the wrong site. Then if you receive an email very often they'll just send tons of these phishing emails to people even if you aren't a customer of a certain bank, the day will come when you do get one of these email that is from your bank supposedly, never respond to an email like this; certainly you should never go click on any kind of link inside these emails or go to your website that way.

There is also a related form of phishing, which is called phishing, which is they call you on the phone and you want it to be careful that when people call you on the phone and ask for personal information that you don't give it out. You should always initiate a call where you're going to actually be giving out your personal information.

Expert: Linda Sherry

Director, National Priorities

http://www.consumer-action.org

Email: editor@consumer-action.org

Linda Sherry, Consumer Action’s director of national priorities and one of the organization’s chief spokespersons, joined the San Francisco-based national consumer education and advocacy group in 1994 from a background as a weekly newspaper reporter.Consumer Action (www.consumer-action.org), founded in 1971, has a national reputation for free multilingual consumer education on personal finance More »