N° 1 son got a call (literally minutes ago) from “his bank” saying that his account had been compromised - looks like they were about to “give him a new account”, no doubt so that he could transfer all his funds.
As luck had it I called upstairs to say “what are you up to?” to get the reply “I’m on the phone to *******, apparently I’ve been the victim of identity fraud”.
Spider sense went to 8, rapidly to 10 when the reaction to “We’ll call you back on the published customer support number to verify” was to start saying there’d be a two hour wait on hold, calling me names and generally really trying to keep the call going.
Needless to say when we called the bank on the official fraud line there had been no suspicious activity on the account.
Close shave methinks.
As Sgt Esterhaus used to say “Let’s be careful out there”.
Same for me, and I don’t do any social media. FB account belongs to my dog, who kindly allows me to access it provided my usage is solely to follow local Mairie/Maires news and activities.
Similar. Only reference online is to a neighbour’s planning objection I must have sent years ago.
Again similar…I was amused and slightly taken aback to find on Google a recent SF post I’d made when searching for wider information on mobile APNs.
Yes, that’s exactly their tactic. When you put it like that, you think people must be crazy to fall for it but they’re good at convincing people that this is urgent, must be done immediately, etc.
Good on you for stepping in and stopping them in their tracks.
Absolutely - the false sense of urgency is generated with the express purpose of defeating the ability to reason and faced with the prospect of losing money people start to panic.
Security 101 in this situation is to stop, hang up and contact the bank via a trusted channel - use the number published on the bank web site or the customer support number on your card. Do not under any circumstances follow any URLs given to you by the caller, or sent by text, or use any numbers they might give you.
As soon as the guy started saying I was an idiot, we’d be forever on hold etc my already high level of suspicion got to “this is a scam until proven otherwise”. He also pushed heavily to give us a phone number so that we could “get straight through to the fraud team” - despite my clearly stating we’d be calling back only on the published CS number.
Needless to say the support call was actually answered quickly by the fraud team who were able to confirm that there had not been any questionable transactions, and that we had not been contacted by the bank as far as they could see.
The claim seemed to be that a new account was needed otherwise DD’s couldn’t be blocked - I’m pretty certain this is wrong and in any case any money falsely taken by DD without the account holder’s permission has to be refunded by the bank.
The problem usually (as people say above) is that your natural suspicions are overridden by the sense of urgency the caller gives you, and which you accept.
Most people are naturally co-operative with authority, and eager to help tackle crime.
Not I, but I do have more rings of firewalls than a Roman castle.
Without opening any, can you see if many of the emails in your Spam folder are from the same sender? Same theme?
If not, it is possible your email address has been entered on spammer lists. At least your email appears to be editing these out but I would be very wary in case some reach your Inbox. And maybe change your email password.
You may already know this, but it’s useful if you set your email not to open external images in emails. If a spammer sends an email with an image, and you open the email and (automatically) the image, the spammer knows yours is a valid address.
I had “show previews of attachments on the mail list” set to on, but when I open a mail the images are not loaded. I have to click on “show external content” to load them.
If you mean the “links” in the post you’re commenting on, it’s mostly just the forum software picking up something which looks like a URL and making it into one.
They don’t go anywhere but all the domains appear to have IP addresses so if @Rachman is agreeable I’ll tweak them to just be text.
iQ Abuse Scan has tagged this website for spamming. Spamming means that the domain has been reported several times for sending unsolicited emails or text messages. While not directly related to scams, it is an activity most legit companies refrain from. We therefore always reduce the trust score of websites that are reported for spamming.
It’s amazing how rapidly irrational panic sets in, isn’t it? I received what was clearly a spam email this morning
ebay
Dear Customer,
Thank you for shopping on ebay . We’ll send a confirmation when your order ships. Your estimated delivery date is indicated below. If you would like to view the status of your order or make any changes to it. Please contact our Customer Service +44 20 7864 9766.|
|Completed checkout on
12-April-2023
Your payment details:
Auto Debit card ship to:
42 Magdalen St, Norwich,
Norfolk, NR3 1JE UK.|
|Seller : nexthand-0 (113) Ask seller a question|
| Apple iPad 9th Gen 64/256GB WiFi 10.2"
Delivery : 12 April - 14 April £475.00
Item Subtotal: £475.00
Shipping & Handling: Free
Qty: 1
Subtotal: £475.00 Total:£475.00|
|If you use a mobile device, you can receive notifications about the delivery of your package and track it from our Customer Service +44 20 7864 9766|
There are a number of interesting things about this message, not least the phone number, as the “who calls me” website lists it as being part of a spam message purporting to be from Ebay.
However, I went into meltdown and tried to log into my ebay account directly (not having used it for quite a bit) and found that they wanted to verify my account and send a text to the mobile phone I no longer had. That was when I found it was impossible to actually contact ebay directly without being logged in, so I can’t do anything at all with the account I had. I don’t need it any more but I’d like to delete it at least!
I checked my bank for any direct debits I had that might be accessed from ebay (only a Paypal account that I’ve since deleted), but I was still flapping all over the place. Daft isn’t it? The so-called enhanced security implemented by ebay recently has meant that the one person who definitely can’t use the account is me
