**** Extreme Caution With Barnfloor.com ****

[gogglespaesano]

Here's a link to the fbi's internet fraud division. They have a lot of information on pursuing and reporting this type of stuff.

http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/internetschemes.htm

[JERRY2KONE]

Just as a note of interest I had something similar last year with CC fraud. I can tell you that none of the police municipalities have the manpower to help with fraud unless it is a large amount of money that is involved. For instance I had approx $5000 worth of charges made on our Visa in one day. Luckily we caught it just in time and stopped the charges. We still ended up losing a couple of Hundred dollars.

When we went to the Sherrifs Department and the local city police Department (San Francisco) they were not at all interested due to the shear volume of fraud cases. There was a woman at the desk who had been working with a company to book a wedding party adventrue in Hawaii for like $40,000. and lost it all. Even then they just do not have the resources to deal with internet or CC fraud. The FBI will not do much either unless it is a substancial amount of actual cash losses involved. This sort of thing is so huge that the law enforcement iagencies are struggling to figure out how to really deal with it. The only people who are equipt to handle it are those companies who have their own investigating forensics in place. We work with federal agents in our employment and they do have people trained to do such stuff, but nowhere near enough to deal with a worldwide problem of petty losses every single day. Good luck with that.

[sikeston34m]

Several years ago, when I first got on Ebay, I was tricked into giving up my information with one of those fraud emails. The email had a link in it that took me to a place that looked just like Ebay.

The crooks had used the same html code to build this place as Ebay did, so no wonder it looked the same.

Once they got my information, they locked me out of my own Ebay account. Then they flooded my email box with Virus's knowing that Ebay had sent a "password change confirmation" email along with the originating IP address of the password change.

Well the guy did NOT crash my system, so I had his IP. I traced him to his service provider (Va. Account). At this point, all I needed was a court order to give up his personal contact information and charges could be filed.

I was envisioning the Police showing up at this guy's house to seize his computer and discover the total illegal activities that he had been up to.

Armed with this information and having done the "leg work" to solve the crime, I went to the County Courthouse to report all of this and submit the information.

This County has ONE person assigned to internet crimes. NOTHING was EVER DONE!

I got my account back from Ebay and did not suffer any losses.

Internet Security has improved some since then, but never assume security when dealing with accounts and the information about them.

I NEVER release CC information over the internet. Reason being, the website that you are purchasing from may be 100% secure. But the information that you enter is stored on YOUR computer. If you are hacked later, via program backdoor, trojan, etc., this information THEN falls into the wrong hands.

My advice is, if you see something online that you want to purchase with a CC, pick up the phone and speak with a real person. It could mean the difference between a good experience in purchasing, and identity theft.