Hacker News Reader

Comment by zorlem | Hacker News Reader

A clever scam with the land-line call.

I wonder where the fraudsters have got all his personal info (including his land-line phone number) from. Even if they got a hold of his receipt that shouldn't contain enough info to get all the other details.

View on HN

The government doesn't make much of an effort to keep your personal information secure. Let's see an example:

http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey...

Yup, that's my home address!

Apparently you don't make much of an effort yourself ;)

he doesn't have much of a choice if he want to have his ham radio license.

The FCC (and a bunch of other government agencies in the U.S.) will happily take a post office box as an address. That's the official address on my ham ticket.

The GP did use a PO box, and even if you use a PO box you still now know someones name, state and general area pretty much unless you are willing to drive far away for some remote box.

  > whois jrock.us

Yep, that's... a whole lot more info, actually.

I used my employer's address there, since .us demands that you be able to receive their physical mail. Kind of pointless with my ham radio information on the web, though.

You can be my roommate at the Post Office: http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey...

(Thanks for making me realize that I'll need to renew my license in a few months, I quite possibly would have forgotten.)

Love the WWV suffix! I'll be looking for you on the internationally allocated standard carrier frequencies.

Back when I was actually active, I was constantly asked by others what the time was. =)

Most assumed that it was a vanity callsign but it's actually what the FCC assigned to me nearly 20 years ago.

You have to realize that we do not hear about all the other cases where they cased someone but did not learn enough info in the end.

He says they cloned his card, so they probably either had a card skimmer installed on top of the ATM's card slot or a tiny hidden camera to photograph the card. Now they have his name and account number. They then followed him home to get his address. Then they looked him up in the phone directory to get his land-line number.

That's not what the article said. It said that the initial fraudulent call claimed that they had cloned it.

Getting a name and phone number is easy. After you've followed the person home, poke through their waste paper bin until you find a letter/bill with the info. If the person is listed in the phonebook (often the default) then you just need the surname from the bin and the town/village of the house you're stood in front of.

Date of birth would be a bit harder to get. Not on the average bill or in a phone book. I guess someone could go through social media once they had your name, but it might not work for everyone.

I'm in the US. Online, I've obtained birth and death dates and lists of mailing addresses of specific persons. In one case, I started with the subject's name and county where they died (the goal was to find the burial plot of a relative). Other cases I started with a name and current city of residence (ie, googling myself and family members). I didn't search social networks. Iirc, most of my success came from online county records.

That doesn't match what the article said. Also, if they already had his card then there would be no need to send a courier to his place and pick it up, that only increases their exposure and the risk of getting caught.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com