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Updated question because old one was embarassing: I saw a spam email from "PayPal" and I didn't realize that it was a phishing attempt. I gave the phishing site my name, telephone number, and email. What could he do with them?

Old question: Well, I saw a spam email, but I didn't realize that it's really a scam at first. I gave him my telephone number, address, and name. What would he do with them? Could he ruin ALL of my reputation with it?

Ben Miller
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MrColdfish
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  • Luckily, I didn't gave him my credit info. The scam was trough PayPal (he said that my PayPal account is suspended.. I reported him at PayPal, but I'm not sure will they do something? I mean the website of the email was completely empty) – MrColdfish Jul 02 '16 at 14:48
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    The only risk I see is that you gave a fishy person the means to try personalized scam attempts on you. E.g. emails that appear to be from your work if that information is linkable, which will let you download malware instead. Or scam emails that are addressed to you personally instead of a general "hi". – Sumurai8 Jul 02 '16 at 16:34
  • I think I might use whois to give him the data on the admin for the domain he's using to send the e-mail. Especially if I can respond via a host that lets me forge the same domain on the from address. – WGroleau Jul 02 '16 at 18:26
  • I did the same but I also clicked on a link of their website, which was totally fake. Does anyone know what can happen? i am really scared. I didn't give away passwords though. – brenda Jul 17 '17 at 10:24

2 Answers2

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Your name, address, and telephone number are all more or less public information. Think about it: how many people do you give this information to every month? If this is the only information you gave out, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Of course, from now on, be more aware before you start handing out information. Just this week, I heard from a friend that his relative had fallen for the Grandparent scam and had lost several thousand dollars. A couple of months ago, a relative of mine had fallen for the Windows Tech Support scam, and it took me some time to clean up his computer. I get calls at my house every day from Windows Tech Support or from Rachel with Cardholder Services and I hang up without thinking about it, but people fall for this every day.

You need to treat every phone call and e-mail you get with suspicion.

Nattgew
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Ben Miller
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    Personally, I try and keep unwelcome callers (live ones, not robocallers) on the line as long as possible with minimum effort at my end ... "Oh you need to talk to X... I'll just go and get them, hang on a minute... <put phone aside; wait for it to start beeping 'cos the other end has hung up and it's off the hook>", stuff like that. I consider it an anonymous favour to anyone who the scammer didn't get around to calling that day as a result of any slight delay I can cause them. – timday Jul 02 '16 at 15:13
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    @timday I appreciate your effort. :) – Ben Miller Jul 02 '16 at 15:15
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    I have an all in one printer, which has fax functionality. When I am at my desk and I see a caller that I don't recognize, I press the fax answer button. I've heard the autodialers will stop calling fax machines when they get that tone. – JTP - Apologise to Monica Jul 02 '16 at 16:18
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    @joetaxpayer: Used to be that you'd just be setting yourself up for faxed scam/spam by doing that. May be different in today's climate. – keshlam Jul 02 '16 at 17:18
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    General observation: if your phone service supports it, NoMoRobo does help. – keshlam Jul 02 '16 at 17:19
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    @keshlam - agreed, but so far, no faxes have come thru from a spammer. – JTP - Apologise to Monica Jul 02 '16 at 17:23
  • @keshlam Good to know. I'm in the process of switching my phone to Ooma, and I'm going to try enabling NoMoRobo on it. – Ben Miller Jul 02 '16 at 17:24
  • @timday: I don't know whether they have improved this "feature" but it used to be the case that if you didn't hang up, they could not make another call. – WGroleau Jul 02 '16 at 18:22
  • @WGroleau: I thought it only worked the other way round: if the caller doesn't hang up, the callee stays connected. (That's what enables so-called "no hang-up" fraud http://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/money/spending/consumer-rights/avoid-getting-caught-by-a-phone-scam , partly mitigated by http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2014/03/bt-changes-uk-phone-call-clearing-procedure-stop-fraudsters.html ). But I think a caller can always clear the call by hanging up, at least on modern equipment (apparently it was indeed different on the old electromechanical Strowger exchanges). – timday Jul 02 '16 at 21:19
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    Well, I can remember coming back to the phone fifteen minutes later and still hearing background noise in the call center. The BT article makes me think (1) it has been fixed; (2( it's different in different places. But note that article also says that EITHER party could keep the line open. – WGroleau Jul 02 '16 at 21:37
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    Best way to deal with a 'Windows Tech Support' guy: tell them you're running Linux. – Pharap Jul 02 '16 at 21:59
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    @timday what I do is I turn on music and let them listen to it. Done it twice already to the same caller. They haven't called back since. – NuWin Jul 03 '16 at 19:15
  • I've just logged in to this account since I've abandoned it and I didn't realize this question was so popular. It's really, really dumb. Anyways, thanks for calming down past me! – MrColdfish Aug 08 '19 at 07:29
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    @MrColdfish I see that in your updated question, you also mention that you gave the scammer your password. This changes the question quite a bit, as that does require action. I’ve removed the word “password” from your question so that the answers on this old question don’t need to be rewritten, but I certainly hope you changed your password. :) – Ben Miller Aug 08 '19 at 09:05
  • If my grandson calls me in the middle of the night needing money I’ll tell him “you got yourself into this trouble, you get yourself out of it”. Scammer will get the same reply. – gnasher729 Mar 08 '21 at 11:49
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The worst thing that can happen is that you've just made your e-mail and phone number useless, and you must get new. That can happen, if you have the bad luck to have an e-mail provider that has poor spam filters, and a country that is not interested in protecting your privacy from criminals.

For example, Gmail excludes spam quite well, and Germany has good laws that punish phone spammers, so they won't risk calling you without reason. But in Poland, there's no effective protection from phone criminals, so once your number gets sold, you'll receive so many junk calls, you'll want to throw your phone away.

No, they can't ruin your reputation with that information. But they can ruin your nerves with unsolicited mails and calls.

SusanW
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FolksLord
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