Sleepin' With the Phishes

Well, I hope everyone had a good Independence Day weekend. Mine was rather interesting, but in the same sense that an exercise class with Richard Simmons is interesting. It's not something you want to go through repeatedly.

I became the victim of credit card fraud when I received a phony AOL message informing me that the credit card my mother and I paid for AOL on was no longer valid. I didn't know what could possibly be wrong with the first card, but since this message informed me that I had to submit a second credit card number or have my AOL service terminated, I did submit another number as a stopgap measure while my mother and I tried to find out what was wrong with the original credit card. Nothing was - and the second card number was used to buy merchandise totaling seven hundred dollars!!

The reason I'm telling you this is because there will be an inevitable ad atop this weblog related to this post, so there will probably be links to sites that protect people from these scams. Also, my experience should serve as a warning to fellow AOL members, as this fake AOL screen was very professionally forged to look like the real McCoy. Don't pay attention to these "AOL" e-mail messages rejecting a credit card you've had no trouble with in favor of another one for Internet access - AOL does not do such a thing! These e-mails are complete and utter fakes! (If you do receive such a message, it's best to contact AOL first before doing anything else!)

Anyway, I spent my Saturday afternoon clearing this up and canceling my pilfered credit card number, as well as getting protection from the charges falsely made in my name.