Most of us take summonses for jury duty seriously, but plenty of people miss out on their civic duty than a new threatening scam offers appeared in the last several years. This new “jury duty” scam is the most recent in the series of identity fraud “phishing schemes”. Fall for it, and whammo, your identity is stolen.
The first jury duty scam has been reported in upper New York State in 2001. Since that time it’s been reported in at least 13 more states, and also Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Colorado, Arizona, California, Maryland, Illinois, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington State.
This “jury duty” system may possibly best be categorized to be a “social engineering” fraud and works something like this:
Con artists contact individuals by telephone to say that those they have targeted have avoided jury duty and warrants are issued for their arrest. Once the victims rightly protest that they have never received these jury duty notification, the scammer will go after what he desires, (for verification purposes only, of course) that is his pigeons’ personal and financial data. Under danger of being hauled off to prison unless they succeed in straightening out this horrible mess, a lot of people, (who would otherwise be careful about what they will disclose of their personal data), will find themselves reeling off their birth dates, social security and credit card numbers in order to persuade their callers that this notification had never arrived, or was never for them from the beginning.
It is easy to check out how this might work. The victims are clearly caught off guard, and are obviously angry with the prospect of an arrest warrant being issued. It preys after people’s general unquestioning popularity of capacity and readiness to cooperate in order to draw out their sensitive details.
How to prevent Falling Victim to “Jury Duty” Scams:
Be sure that court workers will very rarely, if ever, telephone to speak about you’ve missed jury duty, or that they’re assembling juries and must pre-screen people who may be selected to serve on them. Thus dismiss as fake any calls of this nature. Remember about the only time you will ever notice, by phone (rather than by mail), anything concerning jury assistance, would be after you have mailed back your own accomplished questionnaire, and perhaps then only rarely.
This latest scam reinforces, once again, that never give out bank account, social security, or credit card numbers on the phone in case you did not initiate the call ~ whether it be to somebody trying to sell you something or even somebody that claims to be coming from a bank or perhaps government unit. In the event that these kinds of callers persist upon “verifying” these details to you, have them read the data to you from their notes, you verifying it, rather approach other way around.
And also a word to the wise ~ Carefully check out your credit card and bank account statements every month, keeping an eye peeled for illegal charges. When you notice something you did not approve, challenge it right away!
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