Lol. I’ve never deposited anything via ATM or a digital picture. I don’t think any of my banks/credit unions offer the service and I haven’t had an ATM card since 1994. My main bank is one block from my office. I walk there on breaks for anything I need. I would say most people I know in my city are similar. I know several who have never had a credit card or an ATM card.
Scam #1 One of DD’s grad school roommate’s grandparents did send the money for that “bail me out, Grandma” scam.
Scam #2 DD was looking for an apartment in Seattle, I ended up surfing and searching with her. I found a couple of perfect places, she pointed out that anything that ticked all the boxes of basic needs and was $1800 was a scam, because those are all $2000. She was right.
Scam #3 Clicking on UPS/Fedex package delivery emails, my DH did this one holiday and I spent ages fixing his laptop. Why? Why would you click on that? You have nothing to do with ordering anything at the holidays
Scam #4 This one is scary and sad. A friend is on the board of a non-profit group that fell victim to the BEC scam. Business Email Compromise. The scammer spoofs an email that matches the CEO/President/etc and sends a request for funds to be transferred or wired to another account.
If you go down the Google search you can find incidents where large companies are taken for hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example, one spoofed a sugar provider to a soft drink company, the company paid the bills for months, not knowing a scammer had phished into the sugar company’s system and sent an email changing the receiving bank account to the scammer’s account. Some of these cases involved years of digging into the company history and setting up major scams.
This group is small, but it still went on for maybe 6-8 months. The two individuals know each other and only when something was mentioned about the payments and got a “what payments” did they discover the spoofed email. Much better accounting practices are being put into place. But imagine that you were on the local PTA or soccer board, everyone is a volunteer, everyone is busy, your friend, Mary the president, tells you to pay Susy for prizes for the Halloween carnival or balls for the team, something very normal and a part of the business. Why and when would you question it. And who would think scammers in Nigeria or Lithuania or wherever would target your little group, with it’s little public webpage that names the officers, but the spoofed email was of the board member at their work not an email of the small group, so they figured out that corollary aspect.
Scammers suck. Imagine how great the world could be if all that negative energy was channeled for good!
Oregon or Maine? I don’t know about Maine, but in Oregon, $662/mo even with a roomate or two sounds very low. Be careful.
Both D and I have recently had “Amazon” texts stating that they were unable to deliver the package and to click the link. My daughter’s sounded plausible and she was expecting a package. She asked me first though, which was a good thing. Of course, it was a scam.
Mine was obviously a scam because it started with “Elizabeth, we have been unable to deliver your package…” Clearly, I am not Elizabeth.
Maine (see my username). She’s been in the apartment for two months and it is working out great. I’m not sure why the rent is so low.
I keep getting emails -reacting positively to my online resume or app…but have no documents ‘out there.’
Recently, many emails from supposedly different companies, informing me my grant request was approved. But all quoting the exact same dollar amount ($6345, I think.) I have no pending grant requests.
After you previously described links to dummy web sites, you don’t want to know the rigamarole I went through to verify the Lands End deep discount offer was legit. It was via email and I am on their mailing list. But this didn’t clearly appear on the main website.
It turned out to be legit but sheesh.
I ended up placing the order by phone, a mess during the pre-holiday. But thanks for the heads up.
I do want to note my Geico rate offer, via a Facebook ad, I think. (Cut cost in half on the car, which is pretty remarkable here.) I did run the numbers but called the local office to verify. And order.
Then the wait, to see how the price jacked at 6 months. That bill just came. No jack. Maybe at 12 months, but I’ve saved 1k already.
My FIL told us he got one of these. He told the caller if they were in jail, they probably deserved it and he certainly wasn’t going to bail them out.
He thought it was a scam, but later he asked us anyway - just to be sure.
My mom got that phone call - supposedly my oldest was in Florida attending a wedding and had gotten in trouble. My oldest is the one who is seriously mentally ill and doesn’t even drive, and would never be in a different state without me! Mom still thought it was a real call, but at least she phoned me to check. Whew!
Unfortunately my elderly FIL fell for it.
This is a new one for me. I received a text message telling me that my Netflix account would be suspended because of a payment issue. When I clicked on the link–it looked like a Netflix site–logo, black/red color, etc. I stopped for a moment before I entered any information and decided to check it out. Went to the Netflix website, which indicated this was a scam. Also, there was info on forwarding the scam message to Netflix.
My mother got one of those (so we think) early one morning. She answered the phone, and a voice said “Grandma?” Since none of her grandkids call her “Grandma”, she responded with the oldest grandson’s name in a fairly incredulous voice (she just had woken up, otherwise she may have responded differently). Since my oldest nephew’s name is neither common nor an English name, they probably thought that she was cursing them out, so they hung up.
I’ve gotten the one where they call you and start yelling at you that your computer is sending viruses to the internet. I’ve had some fun with those ones.
Emails from PayPal or well known banks telling you to login to verify whatever, but it goes to a fake mimic site,.
Worse is text messages from AirBnB/VRBO, as a host, telling you to click the link for the new booking or inquiry info. Those are tough to resist as that is the normal means of communication.
I got a call from “the IRS” telling me I owed money and if I didn’t pay right away I would be arrested. The heavily-accented woman sounded like she was in a room with a slew of other “IRS officers” doing the same thing. I had a little fun with her, asking how much I owed ($20K), when did they need it (right away, or, you know, JAIL), and would they accept a credit card payment?? At that point she put a Big Strong Man on the phone and I blasted him. H thought I should not have engaged, but I was quarantined with nothing better to do.
Any phone call that caller ID shows as having your area code and prefix but which you do not recognize.
Periodically get the phone call where a computer generated voice tells me that if I do not call a particular number the IRS will “send the cops” after me. As if the IRS would refer to the police as “the cops”.
I keep getting an email from Amazon that our order is being held because our Amazon credit card has problems. Of course, there is a link to press. I just delete them. My husband gets them too, but never at the same time, and he is owner of the credit card.
This is absolutely not true when one owns a local business (or sells things like ponies). Soon to be clients call often. Others are scams. It’s easy to hang up on the scammers, but we’d be without a lot of money if we didn’t answer any of them.
True! For us, about 95% of the time, those calls are scam, but if we didn’t answer we would miss some important calls. So frustrating.
I had a new text scam yesterday, which looked pretty convincing at first. It claimed to be from DMV and said I needed ensure my contact info was updated to comply with regulations. But instead of two capital letters (CA or NY, for instance), it said NyDMV. I blocked it.
Agree with @Creekland . I have strangers call my cell regularly, so I have to answer, or I would lose business. My phone usually flags scam calls, but not always. Most scam calls are pretty obvious. I don’t have a student loan or an extended warranty.