New Type of Identity Theft

Or at least new to me…

A few days ago, I got an email with the subject of Inquiry from a Michael Fleming at michaeltfleming6@gmail.com. Initially, I didn’t think anything of it. This time of the year I get a lot of emails with random subjects because of Desert Code Camp. So I opened it and here is what it said.

Joseph,

Good afternoon. I was wondering if you could tell me which city you lived in 2018 before moving back to city removed?

city name 1 removed

city name 2 removed

city name 3 removed

I am doing an internet recruiting quiz and this popped up as a question. Hoping you can help me out! I would really appreciate it. : )

Mike

This seems a bit odd especially for a “internet recruiting quiz”. So I responded to the email with.

Why would were I live pop up in a recruiting quiz?

“Mike” responded about 13 minutes later with…

I apologize for bothering you. If you can’t tell me that’s fine. I know this seems super random, but the quiz grabs all kinds of random stuff from material/content published on the internet.

To me, this was even odder. Although the response time made it seem real the response really didn’t.

To which I responded…

Honestly it sounds like you are attempting to steal my identity with a question like that.

“Mike” then responded 4 minutes later with…

Yeah. I kind of thought that after I sent the message. I apologize. Just disregard it all. I do random stuff sometimes and realized, after the fact, that it probably wasn’t appropriate. Enjoy the rest of your evening.

That pretty much ended the conversation. Maybe I am overly cautious or maybe this was honest. I did move, I am in Technology but a lot of this stuff is publicly available.

Moral of the story, be careful of what you share and to whom you share it with.