Identity theft used for dating scams

WJLA7 last night reported a scam involving the use of stolen identities in dating apps.
  

I couldn’t find the story last night, but people have found that their identities have been used by others to collect support under false pretenses, where as people sending the financial support have been scammed.

The documentary film “Online Dating Scam” from early 2017 explains how it may happen.

  

I don’t use dating apps, but Economic Invincibility discusses it on YouTube in his channel in May 2018. I like the metaphor “A little minnow about to be devoured by a shark.”  He thinks that the smartphone has destroyed the older online dating world.

FICO will make a major change for consumers with lower credit activity volume

Fair Isaac will make a change to FICO score calculations in early 2019, according to Anna Maria Abdriottis of the Wall Street Journal. 

FICO will consider how a consumer manages cash accounts with checks, deposits and withdrawals as well as traditional repayment behaviors.  It is believed this will improve the scores for many consumers with little credit history but stable finances.

When I worked for Chilton in Dallas in the 1980s, the colloquial name for FICO was "risk predictor". 

Credit freezes -- they're free!! (and hard to find on websites)

As Ann Carnns reports in the New York Times, credit freezes are now free, and many feel people should do it.  Here is the article as of Sept. 14. 

But the freeze scripts are often buried deep within websites, as companies try to see you pleonastic monitoring services.  

The free freezes were part of Trump’s financial re-regulation package.

The AARP related that just 14% of its members use the freezes.

  

Experian (aka TRW aka Chilton and Pinger) has a detailed page on credit freezes here. 

Rideshare identity theft involving "rented" driver accounts

NBC in San Francisco has reported a scheme of “rideshare driver identity theft”, where brokers set up accounts on Lyft (and possibly Uber) and allow others to “rent” the accounts without going through the usual background checks.

NBCBayArea has a detailed report here .

  

The report lists eight ways to identify your driver, and the flaws with each method. A driver who does not respond to a text may well be fraudulent.

Porch thieves use stolen personal data to create fake credit accounts in homeowner's names

WJLA7 has uncovered a new identity theft scam, whereby thieves who have obtained stolen personal information from a security breach on the Internet, order credit cards in the victim’s name and steal them from a porch before the victim comes home. Here is the story. 

The scheme only works with houses or townhouses accessible from the street where the thief has a home address that matches normal credit reporting company records.

   

In some cases, thieves stake out FedEx or UPS or even US Mail deliveries. Homeowners can stifle the plans with camera surveillance, but often don’t find out until they see a credit report or a bank texts them about an unusual charge.

Followup on Facebook ID protection: You can use advertisers to prove who you are

Just to add to the post of Sept 14.

  

It appears that Facebook requires that individuals who want to “boost” issue-oriented posts on their pages in advertorials (posts that don’t actually sell anything or ask for donations for a non-profit) have to have proven their US “identities” by having purchased at least one ad in the past for a product they were selling in a conventional manner.  Adsense, Amazon Associates, and ads bought for them by POS publishers for books don’t count.

Also, Facebook has terminated accounts of police departments (like in Memphis) who use fake accounts to entrap some activists or to spy on groups like Black Lives Matter. 

Facebook gets into the business of preventing ID theft for boosted posts

Just a quick note.  If you submit a post of issue-oriented commentary on your Facebook page (not member account) and don’t try to sell anything and then try to boost the page, Facebook may turnyou down and do a very careful vetting of your ID and residence (to make sure it isn’t Russia).

  

This will included photographing both sides of your driver’s license and having a letter sent to your residence (not business or PO) along the mines of my own proposal in the past based on NCOA.