True story

Chat rooms are also places where fraudsters exchange information to facilitate their attacks.

Country: United States

Year: 2007

Background: A Dateline NBC journalist infiltrated a chat room used by fraudsters to buy and sell personal information. A financial institution collaborating with this journalist gave him an authentic credit card to use as bait.

Consequences: A few minutes after selling the credit card number, it had been used in 16 different countries and the account’s credit limit had been reached.

Read the article

Instant messaging

Instant messaging or chatting is a means of communicating online that allows users to chat in real time with one or several people using aliases.

Examples of messaging software: Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AOL Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, iChat, Skype

Caution

A fraudster may:

  • Pretend to be someone else in order to earn your trust and then harass you or damage your reputation
  • Spy on your conversations in order to obtain personal information and impersonate you
  • Send you worms, Trojan horses, spywares or other malwares

How can you protect yourself?

  • Always use an alias
  • Do not post any personal information in your profile
  • Do not provide any personal information during your conversations
  • Protect your parents' and friends' privacy by not providing any personal information about them
  • Beware of strangers
  • Beware of files and links received from unknown origins
  • Don't click on a link provided in an ad message, even if the message comes from someone you know
  • Be sure to update your instant messaging software regularly
  • Protect yourself from worms, Trojan horse, spywares and viruses.

 

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