[SpamCop-List] Re: Identity Compromised?

[C. S.]

Sometime around Mon, 03 Jan 2005 02:51:31 -0800, "Bill K." <billk at no.spam> deemed it
necessary to offer:

> How many of you have received spam which address you by your full name, 
> which you have never given out publicly over the Internet?

I have never received such a pitch, though I have received
spew targeted to the geographic region indicated by my
Yahoo! address profile.
If you have said information stored in any fashion on your
system, I'd suggest using a full battery of scans with ad/spy/malware
and antivirus detectors. Failing that, I'm one of those geeky types
who would just go ahead and do a low-level format and re-install of
my OS and other software, since I archive everything I want to keep
for easy retrieval.

> What's also disconcerting is that is that in the places where such 
> information was entered, such as online product registration forms for 
> new purchases, other information, such as street address and other 
> sensitive personal and private information were also entered.

Likely encoded into the URL, as a tracker, though that may be
too simple an explanation.

> What do you figure is likely happening here?  Do you suppose some of the 
> companies, whose sites this personal information was entered, have some 
> corrupt workers within extracting information from their database to use 
> for their own unscrupulous purposes?
> 
> What to do in these situations?

If the standard actions for such a situation prove fruitless,
I'd consider contacting law-enforcement about identity theft
possibly *in-progress*. The *in-progress* aspect might get
them off their duffs to actually investigate, rather than
telling you "So sorry, but..."

> Thanks.
> 
> -Bill