topic Re: Black Market Alert in General Credit Topics

Dark web alert

Chickenlil155 — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 15:35:29 GMT

I got a dark web alert today. It says dark web surveillance alert, with a gmail address that's never been used by me and my wife's name.

Note: She isn't monitering, I'm wife and trying to improve the scores for my husband. I've never had an email with this address and I don't monitor his stuff. I don't even know anything about the dark web.

Re: Dark web alert

chuckwood — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 17:46:48 GMT

Do you have a common last name that maybe the scan picked up a first initial and last name?

Re: Dark web alert

RadioRob — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 19:49:21 GMT

Is it from a service you’re expecting to monitor for you? There are some scams running around claiming you have an alert and want you to try to login to a fake portal as a way of harvesting credentials since they know most people use the same username/password on multiple sites.

Black Market Alert

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 22:03:45 GMT

Hello all, I received an odd alert from MyFICO this week that my phone number was found in a black market surveillance.

It says that a record was created on 12/05/2020, and gives the name and address of a person I don't know in a neighboring town.

What does this mean, and do I need to be concerned? I can't tell if the person named is also a victim or if he's the one making me a victim by intentionally using my phone number.

In case it helps to know: I've had the mobile number for 10 years. It originated from the same State but different County, so it seems less likely to have been a typo.

Re: Black Market Alert

Curious_George2 — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 23:26:55 GMT

I wouldn't sweat it. The vast majority of those alerts are about insignificant stuff.

My email address is very vanilla (similar to george at yahoo dot com, but not that) so a lot of people give out my real email address as their fake one. Some of the companies they give it to then have data breaches. So I get tons of those alerts telling me that my email address is on The Dark Web. Sounds scary (scary enough for me to pay for more monitoring, they hope!). But in my case, like yours, the info that's out there is innocuous. Scammers have my email address and your phone number, perhaps with other names attached to them. The only bad thing they can do with that is send us more spam. No big deal.

Re: Black Market Alert

Iusedtolurk — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 07:21:11 GMT

@Curious_George2 wrote:
I wouldn't sweat it. The vast majority of those alerts are about insignificant stuff.

My email address is very vanilla (similar to george at yahoo dot com, but not that) so a lot of people give out my real email address as their fake one. Some of the companies they give it to then have data breaches. So I get tons of those alerts telling me that my email address is on The Dark Web. Sounds scary (scary enough for me to pay for more monitoring, they hope!). But in my case, like yours, the info that's out there is innocuous. Scammers have my email address and your phone number, perhaps with other names attached to them. The only bad thing they can do with that is send us more spam. No big deal.

Good info for people who really are not familiar with all the things they get notified about (dark web emails found, phone numbers found, passwords found on old sites you don't use anymore "Myspace".

Half of the stuff found on the darkweb is in the public domain on you.

Irregardless it's always a good thing to change your passwords occasionally and use different ones across your accounts.

Along with notices like these I get so tired of random emails claiming I have so many millions of dollars to collect and also those...

"Your Paypal account has been limited" and not to forget ones I have seen frequently of late stating "Your order is on the way" from so and so and I haven't ever ordered from so and so.

Also one thing to note when you get spam mail just Delete It instead of hitting an Unsubscribe button...usually that button unleashes malware or leads to fake sites that capture your info.

The only alerts I really pay attention to are the ones that I have set up in my accounts triggered by set parameters.

Re: Black Market Alert

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 15:33:25 GMT

Thank you for the replies and good information, I appreciate it. I do understand about black market alerts, I've received them before.

This particular alert was different because it had someone else's full name and full address with my phone number--a stranger who lives near me.

Have you guys had this particular alert before too? I just want to make sure there's really nothing to worry about other than being alert.

Thank you again.

Re: Black Market Alert

designated_knitter — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:46:28 GMT

My SSN is on the dark web associated with an address and married name from 2011. I make sure all my credit reports are on ic3 and get twitchy if I have to thaw them as I had gotten an alert for a hard inq back in March when my TU was thawed for about 3 days.

The thing that ticked me off is that they wouldn't give me any information about the person who applied the inquiry... like their address or email. If they would give me that information, maybe that would slow down the identity thieves. The best I could do was get the inquiry removed.

Re: Black Market Alert

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:12:03 GMT

I received the same alerts on 12/5/2020. One had my phone number and the other had my husband's number. Both had a different full name and address in VA Beach. I looked up the addresses and found one to be an assisted living facility and the other for an apartment building.

Do you happen to have a 757 area code?

Re: Black Market Alert

Hershey_Kiss — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 15:43:17 GMT

I just received that same alert. All the information included was correct with the exception of the ID. I dont know what that number is. What should I do about this? I just cleared up my credit reports. Can someone help me PLEASE?

Re: Black Market Alert

sxa001 — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 01:44:38 GMT

I was the victim of identity theft in 2010, the only thing they tried to do was file taxes in my name and also they tried but as far as I am aware failed to get some payday loans. I had to go though a police report and credit freezes and still now have to file my taxes with a special code that is mailed to me every year.

I have tons of those dark web alerts, all with the address I was living at from 2008-2010. I check the new ones to make sure they aren't showing new information but I guess I am going to be getting these for many years to come.

Info on Dark Web.

ScoreSizzle — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 06:00:17 GMT

The Myfico app just alerted me that **bleep** near everything about me was on the dark web. Name, DOB, address and phone number and almost my full email.

Not good. Credit has been frozen for years. But everything is getting changed tonight. Wow.

Really shocked.

Any tips besides changing all passwords?

Re: Info on Dark Web.

thornback — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 06:31:57 GMT

@ScoreSizzle wrote:
The Myfico app just alerted me that **bleep** near everything about me was on the dark web. Name, DOB, address and phone number and almost my full email.

Not good. Credit has been frozen for years. But everything is getting changed tonight. Wow.

Really shocked.

Any tips besides changing all passwords?

Most of my info is on the dark web too - has been for a couple of years now but so far, no fraud issues - thank goodness.

Change your passwords periodically and consider using one of those strong password generators (just keep a record of them somewhere bc they're nearly impossible to memorize), set up two/multi-factor identification on everything, keep reports locked/frozen at all times, protect your computers with antivirus/malware software, and stay vigilant. That's basically all you can do...

Re: Info on Dark Web.

ScoreSizzle — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 06:41:57 GMT

@thornback wrote:
@ScoreSizzle wrote:
The Myfico app just alerted me that **bleep** near everything about me was on the dark web. Name, DOB, address and phone number and almost my full email.

Not good. Credit has been frozen for years. But everything is getting changed tonight. Wow.

Really shocked.

Any tips besides changing all passwords?

Most of my info is on the dark web too - has been for a couple of years now but so far, no fraud issues - thank goodness.

Change your passwords periodically and consider using one of those strong password generators (just keep a record of them somewhere bc they're nearly impossible to memorize), set up two/multi-factor identification on everything, keep reports locked/frozen at all times, protect your computers with antivirus/malware software, and stay vigilant. That's basically all you can do...

Awesome. Thank you.

I feel like I slipped up by not clearing my cookies and memory. On my browsers.

Again, thank you for the response, @thornback

Re: Info on Dark Web.

thornback — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 06:49:08 GMT

YW - Pretty sure just about anyone who uses the internet has some info on the dark web - it's just a matter of how much.

Clearing browsing history and cache/cookies is a good move too -- tho I do get a bit annoyed when forms and stuff don't auto-populate because I cleared everything...🙃

Re: Info on Dark Web.

thornback — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 06:57:20 GMT

Oh - I forgot - you may also want to use more than one email - create a "throwaway" to use for any random registrations/sign-ups for websites you may visit for leisure but are unimportant, and have another primary that's only shared with your creditors/banks. Never use the primary for anything not finance-related.

Re: Info on Dark Web.

Brian_Earl_Spilner — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:44:07 GMT

@ScoreSizzle wrote:
@thornback wrote:
@ScoreSizzle wrote:
The Myfico app just alerted me that **bleep** near everything about me was on the dark web. Name, DOB, address and phone number and almost my full email.

Not good. Credit has been frozen for years. But everything is getting changed tonight. Wow.

Really shocked.

Any tips besides changing all passwords?

Most of my info is on the dark web too - has been for a couple of years now but so far, no fraud issues - thank goodness.

Change your passwords periodically and consider using one of those strong password generators (just keep a record of them somewhere bc they're nearly impossible to memorize), set up two/multi-factor identification on everything, keep reports locked/frozen at all times, protect your computers with antivirus/malware software, and stay vigilant. That's basically all you can do...
Awesome. Thank you.

I feel like I slipped up by not clearing my cookies and memory. On my browsers.

Again, thank you for the response, @thornback

Most of that info are from data breaches. So, when you hear about a company being hacked, the info taken is usually compiled and sold on the dark web.

Re: Info on Dark Web.

tnhomestead — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 14:25:39 GMT

Couple tips from some classes I did in the past.

Get a chromebook and use that only for logging into financial institutions. Never use your main laptop or cell to log in. Reduces the risk of viruses and keyloggers to almost nill.

Get a good password for each financial institution, all different that way if one is hacked the rest are safe.

Separate emails work great, but hard to keep track of.

Re: Info on Dark Web.

tricie17 — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 22:48:41 GMT

+1 on this message. I receive these messages periodically.