POF : What sort of scam is this?
So, I joined POF last night and started chatting with this nice lady who wanted to take it off site to get to know each other better. We chatted for a while and then she asked me to verify who we claim to be before taking this any farther. I guess she has had trouble in the past with catfishing? I thought she’d suggest a video call, but asked me to send a pic of my license. She sent hers first because she « has nothing to hide ». Well, I thought it might be smart to cover up my address in the photo but I forgot to cover up my DL#. She then starts asking about my height, weight, the color of my eyes… you know, the things I covered up on my ID, and even went to so far to say « you should be more careful with your ID number and your address next time. » I told her I’d be happy to tell her these things on a video call in the morning (it was like 4am), but she played it off like I was indirectly calling her a scam. yadda yadda. Well, I call the number back this morning and it was a textnow number that no one answered. I check the plentyoffish app, and I no longer see our conversation? Which means the account must of been deleted? I’m just sitting here wondering how screwed I am. I think in the picture I sent you could see part of an old address in a piece of mail on the table, but this person in no way has my real address that’s on my ID.
So, what sort of scam is this, and how badly could i be screwed? Besides watching my bank account, and credit report is there anything else I should do to protect myself? This was literally the first person I actually felt comfortable chatting with and it sucks to feel it was all a ruse. I almost feel duty bound to contact this lady in the ID to let her know her identity is being used in such a way. I couldnt find her on any quick google search for any social media. Crazy, it really is Plenty of Sharks.
Edit – it looks like they blocked me on POF but their account still exists. I reported it to POF.
By. Honest_-_Critique
I did a quick google search which you might do to obtain more information. It seems one possibility is that they can give your ID number out at traffic stop. Or they may have been trying to get your birthday since that is information that a lot of places ask for. I think you should report it to the authorities just in case something comes of it. That way you will have a paper trail. They also might be more familiar with this scam and can give you further directions on how to protect yourself. Hope this turns out to be nothing but a lesson learned. Good luck, OP!
The big three in ID theft is your full name, date of birth and social security number. You don’t mention if your date of birthday was covered up, hopefully it was. They don’t have your social security number thankfully. What happened sounds very fishy. It’s possibble they just wanted your drivers license image to use to fool others on pof. It may be why they wanted as much covered up information as possible. They do have your drivers license number, so I would for sure contact your DMV and tell them your drivers license number may have been stolen. They may issue you a new one or at least there will be an official record of it. It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on your credit and maybe use a credit monitoring service atleast for the next while. Mostly learn from this. Never show images of official ID to a stranger. The video chat idea is good, but also a « lets cut out the online crap » attitude is not a bad thing and offer a quick meet up for coffee to learn more about each other than in weeks of texting.
can be used in an attempted insurance scam like someone hit their car and ran.
[Me Rn](https://media.giphy.com/media/bzOwkffoJcEXcP2OxW/giphy.gif)
I gave a stranger a photo of my ID back in january because they said they needed it for a refund. ( see my post history for the full story) I’m not sure what to do about it either