I Fell for a Phishing Scam, What Do I Do Now?
Identity thieves are getting increasingly more sophisticated and cunning with their phishing scams. With so many convincing and deceptive phishing emails, pop-ups, and phone calls out there, it’s not uncommon for personal information to be compromised in this way. Even though you might be ready to kick yourself for falling for a phishing scam, don’t panic. Swift and appropriate action can help remedy the situation quickly before any lasting damage is done to your credit or your reputation. When caught early, phishing-scam identity theft is actually quite fixable. In this post, we’ll walk you through what you should do if you’ve fallen for a phishing scam.
Assume Your Information Will Be Used
If you’ve given away sensitive information to a phisher, you can’t just hope for the best and hope that your information will not be used in a fraudulent manner. To be safe, you need to assume the worst-that the identity thief will use your information to commit crimes. Phishing scams are run for one specific purpose-to steal identities. Thieves go to great lengths to set up these elaborate scams, so you can assume they wouldn’t go to all of this trouble if they weren’t going to use your information for fraudulent activities. Own this reality, but don’t panic. You need to stay calm in order to take appropriate and effective action.
Now What
So now you know you’ve been a victim of a phishing scam, and you know your information will be used for fraudulent purposes. Now what do you do? Here is a list of things you should do ASAP:
- File a police report. Your local police station should have a special report for identity-theft related crimes. Let the police know you fell victim to a phishing scam, and your identity may be in jeopardy. The police will help you document this and decide what to do.
- Set fraud alerts. Your next step is to contact any of the three credit bureaus to place fraud alerts on your credit reports. Setting a fraud alert with one bureau will place the alert on your reports with all three bureaus.
- Set passwords. To safeguard your accounts from the identity thief, you’ll need to contact your utilities companies, credit card companies, and banks to set passwords on all of your accounts. That way, the thief will not be able to access them without knowing your password.
