ProtectMyID.com/scdor Do not give anyone your credit card number

ProtectMyID is a free service that is paid for by the State of South Carolina.  Do not give anyone your credit card number for anything related to the data breach at the Department of Revenue.

We have helped many people here over the past few days, mostly with directions on how to get to the right place.  We notice that there seem to be quite a few elderly people having difficulty trying to navigate this process.  It sounds like this is the first time many of them have turned on the computer since the grand kids came to visit this summer.  This could be a recipe for disaster.  What we may find is that the cure may be worse than the disease.  In the rush to do something in panic we may create more identity theft incidents than the original data breach.

Case in point, one elderly couple who called us seemed quite adept at following our instructions to get them to the correct web site.  We directed them to our website so that they could click thru to the proper www.protectmyid.com/scdor website.  But no matter how many times they did it correctly, the ended up on a website that wanted them to pay $15 using their credit card.  My guess is that they have some sort of virus on their computer that hijacks their web traffic to pirate sites.

This could get ugly.