I thought whipping up a list was going to be easy. Well the first thing that I see is…I was wrong. It is not as easy as I thought in the past week I have received the following calls:

  1. About extending my automobile’s extended warranty that is about to expire.
  2. Entrepreneurship via Amazon and making excellent return for a pledge by investment.
  3. 3 calls from different 800 numbers implying IRS agency looking for personal information.
  4. An 800 numbers implying Social Security agency looking for personal information.
  5. An 800 numbers implying Medicare agency looking for personal information.

Here are some tools that you need to remember to assist in remedy of this plague of “Robocalling” that is eating the nation cold. Meanwhile our legislators are wasting countless time on matters that really do not assist in issues that are going to help the public interest of our country at large.

  • Don’t ever do business with a solicitor. If you did not call, don’t think the call will help.
  • Don’t let a caller scare you into losing out due to something expiring, to save you dollars, or any other tactic.
  • If someone is claiming that they have a deal that is going to be “the easy way” or sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t worth the words expressed. Nothing comes easy!
  • Never, never think that someone calling is an official. The IRS, Social Security, Unemployment, Divisions of Human Services, and over 99% of government, NEVER, EVER use the telephone as a means of communication in an official matter. So don’t divulge critical personal information to anyone over the telephone, by email, text or other communication. These government agencies ALWAYS send an agent to your doorstep wearing proper ID, if it is important.
  • NEVER enter your passwords via an email, text, phone call or other communication, unless YOU initiated the attempt to login.
  • Think about getting insurance if you identity is stolen, like I.D. Shield and Life Lock.

I have had my identity stolen once because a business I did a transaction with had a list with critical personal information hacked by a third party. Once real money is stolen from you it usually goes out of the country, so chances of recovery are real hard. If your identity is stolen. Here are things that you need to do if and when you are taken:

  • Act FAST!!
  • You have to file a police report wherever the crime happened. In my case, it happened at my workplace, so I filed the report at the police station where my workplace was located.
  • Subsequent attempts at theft and/or stealing your identity that do not affect you financially should be reported directly to the FBI’s cyber crime task force via a “IC3 Complaint Referral Form”.
  • If money is missing, where the theft happens makes the difference in where you need to report it. When you report it, you need to tell the companies the police report number and the city or county where the report is filed:
    • I had money missing from my bank account via a MasterCard transaction, so I filed a dispute on the fraudulent charge via the rules.
    • I had money missing on Amazon whereby gift cards were purchased and sent to an email.
    • The hackers used my Google account to send and receive emails to verify my identity and then erased the emails permanently. If this happens, you need to contact Google or your email carrier and have the erased emails restored.
    • You need to have forensics prove the signature level of use whereby you computers are used, so that activity that matches that of original business that match the hackers is identified. Since the signature level matched, I knew which business I did business with was the list that got hacked. After I identified the business, I went after them financially, and they eventually settled with me because they knew that their lists were hacked.
    • Check with your insurance agent to see if you have coverage.
    • File a report with an ID-theft insurance broker.

We need to get on our elected officials now to assist in these areas of erosion of our government, and start making this country the country that we are proud to be a citizen. A list of finding your U.S. House Of Representatives is at: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative, and the U.S. Senate at: https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm. I strongly urge each and every person to contact their Congress Representative and both Senators and urge them that you favor the “Pallone’s (NJ) bill” H.R.946, Stopping Bad Robocalls Act and “Thune’s (SD) bill” S.151, TRACED Act passed and put into law, so that both persons and businesses can have some peace and quiet, improve security, and also improve our ability to communicate and even improve our quality of life. Hopefully you never get hacked! I am also letting my comments section open to be forum for a posting if anyone knows a solicitor or hacker out there doing current damage, to help assist any one from damaging identity and or your pocketbooks.

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