Mr John Notice

I have been working on this identity theft blog for a little while now. Today Mr John Notice showed up in my email box to taunt me about an inheritance.

Notice that the email address of Mr. John is maxjohn@hotmail.com. This becomes a little weird considering I am supposed to get a 6 million pound payout. That’s quite a lot of money to represent with a Hotmail address, don’t you think? If an inheritance was to show up at your doorstep you would have a warning via snail mail or a telephone call from a legal representative or an estate executor.

This is a nice gesture by Mr. John, but I don’t think I feel like cleaning up my credit and finances every time someone sends me a bogus inheritance notice. Protect yourself from identity by asking yourself questions like:

• Who died that would like to give me money?
• Why is the sum in pounds – do I know anyone in Britain?
• How did you get my email address?
• And… many others

Another good question for this well written request: How does my email address tie into any of my identifying information? Consider that heavily. How would anyone know the often complex email address that is often as unique as the DNA of an Amazonian Greenleaf Tadpole? Your identity may be hunted by either someone that knows you and your email address or someone who randomly spams millions of people world wide with the same email message. You pick

I hope the questions were enlightening, however this is the part where the identity thieves want your personal information. By no means is this all the information that is needed to commit identity theft fraud. Hence the whole point is to…

…you guessed it, establish a trusting relationship with the victim first. Whatever you do, don’t do what is asked of you in this or any other phishing email. Phishing emails are often designed to gather your information under the pretense of trust with a heavy dose of deceit and even heavier consequences. I feel that by now you don’t expect to be the rightful heir. If you do, I sure hope you have identity theft insurance, or at the very least, a little common sense.