The money snatchers are out there waiting for you…

February 17th, 2010

You don’t even have to make a wrong move to get caught

Sometimes it seems that for every decent person slogging away to make an honest living, there is an equal number of lazy no-goodniks hiding behind a wall or tree, waiting for you to come along so they can steal your money and use that for their living. One has not only to be alert at all times but one has to think clearly to stay ahead of the bad guys. Look what’s going on and take steps to protect yourself.

Your GPS
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car broken into while they were at a football game. Their car was parked in the parking ground adjacent to the football stadium for the use of football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard.

Thieves

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen. The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football
game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean out the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.

Be discreet

If you have a GPS, don’t put your home address in it. Put a nearby address (like a store or gas station) so you can still find your way home.

Mobile Phones
This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her mobile phone after her handbag was stolen. The handbag, which contained her cell phone, credit card, wallet, etc., was stolen. 20 minutes later when she called her hubby from a pay phone to tell him what had happened, hubby says “I received your text asking
about our Pin number and I replied a little while ago.”

The bank

They rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to text ‘hubby’ in the contact list and got hold of the pin number of the ATM. Within 20 minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.

Lessons learned

Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact list. When sensitive info is asked for through texts, confirm by calling back. When you’re being texted by friends to meet them somewhere, call back to confirm that the message came from them. If you don’t reach them, be very careful about going places to meet ‘family and friends’ who text you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 9:22 am and is filed under Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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