In Part 1 and Part 2 (read at https://riverreporter.com/stories/caveat-emptor,213939? and https://www.riverreporter.com/stories/caveat-emptor,216258), I explained how I was scammed over the last week and what I have done to prevent any financial damage.

I am a savvy consumer and I lost only some $29 to fraudsters over the decades.

I received an email from TransUnion recently. It is a Credit Alert advising me that a new Fraud Alert was put in my file, which I set up two days before. In the middle of the body of the email message, there is a button: "Log In."

Now the things get very strange and suspicious:

When I click on the button, I get the US Bank website, and not the TransUnion website, at https://onlinebanking.usbank.com/auth/login/?source_caller=ui&client=CreditScore&shortlink=5f4e21b7&pid=Email.

This is either:

1. A failure of TransUnion IT people who incorrectly put the US Bank link on the "Log In" button in this email message;

or

2. This is a fraudulent message pretending to be sent by TransUnion (fraudsters have that email capability). If it is a fraud, then the hacker has access to my file and knows I put a Fraud Alert on my file two days before.

I took the following action:

1. I called TransUnion.
2. TransUnion representatives were not able to explain why the "Log In" leads to the US Bank address.
3. After much trying and after being switched from one person to another, TransUnion confirmed that the email address transunion@em-tuci.transunion.com, from which the email message was sent was a genuine TransUnion email address.
4. As this does not mean in the least that the message was not sent by a fraudster, I changed the password for accessing my Transunion file. With "freezing" my wife's file and my file at TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, and by adding the Fraud Alert to each, all of which I had done two days before, this is the maximum a consumer can do to protect his credit and his identity.

We are really left to our own devices here, as the government agencies do nothing to protect us:

The Federal Trade Commission does not investigate our complaints, just files them. The local police maintain it is outside their purview.

I filed an IC3 report with the FBI at IC3@gov. com, but I have received no response.

Thus, this remains Caveat Emptor!—Buyer beware!

The fraudster who tried to scam me—he did not get any money out of me—continues operating with impunity and continues sending me "offers" and "discounts."

These scammers proliferate, more now than in the past, because they know there will be no repercussions. I would chalk it up to the incompetence of those government agencies responsible for consumer protection. 

When you are fighting a scammer, you must be at least as skilled as the scammer and preferably more. 

This is clearly not the case. I would know how to take a scammer off the internet. Why not the FBI? Instead, we get advice for seniors who have already been scammed on how to protect themselves in the future.

Frequently, the excuse is that some scammers are foreign-based. But we know that the FBI has offices in many foreign countries.

To make a long story short, something has to be done about this. We all remember how, 30 years ago, fraudsters used to have access to our mobile phones. We later used to protect ourselves by punching in security codes. There could be a similar way to regularly and continually identify scammers and block them from the use of the internet that way.

Von Mises is an occasional opinion column on economics, written by Ivan Orisek of Forestburgh, NY. It’ll look at money and the way money works in America, and show you the numbers behind the headlines.