Copyright 9to5Mac
The Department of Homeland Security recently said that Chinese criminal gangs have made more than $1 billion from scams directed at US phone numbers. While phone-based scams once relied on random number dialing, the disturbing truth these days is that they most likely bought your phone number and more from one of the hundreds of data brokers eager to sell your personal data for profit … Scam texts and calls are big business these days, with SIM farms targeting tens of thousands of people per day. The BBC caught scam call center workers on hidden cameras as they laughed at the people they were tricking. One worker bragged about making a quarter of a million dollars from victims in the US and UK. Another admitted to targeting seniors on purpose, forcing one woman to give up her last $100 on Christmas Day. The first step scammers take is to find potential victims to target. This is done by purchasing personal data from data brokers, who in turn bought it from app developers who collect information when you register to use their apps. This can include your phone number, email address, and even interests and lifestyle. By combining known information about you, criminal gangs can target you with specific scams likely to seem more convincing to someone with your profile. Once your data is out there, it’s not just spam texts and calls you need to worry about. Identity theft is a growing threat, where criminals use personal data to impersonate you in order to open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, and take out loans in your name. Even if you’re able to prove you’re not responsible, unravelling the mess can take a great deal of time and effort – and leave your credit rating in tatters until everything is finally resolved. These risks are why it makes sense to erase as much of your personal data as possible from the web. While you can do this manually, it’s a hugely time-consuming activity, and needs to be repeated at regular intervals as new data is added and new risks appear. The far easier approach is to subscribe to Incogni. They delete your personal info from everywhere on the web, currently covering more than 400 data brokers. Not only do they submit removal demands, but they monitor compliance and follow-up automatically when a company fails to respond. And it’s not a one-and-done hit – they continually search for new data to take down. We’ll never be able to completely eradicate scammers from the internet, but what you can do is make yourself very much less likely to be targeted.
