I just got a PayPal one, stating I bought Bitcon (?)for $550+. I don’t use PayPal, and all my accounts are frozen.
H got a text last night saying our PayPal account was being limited due to a login from.an unusual location. We haven’t used PayPal in forever. So I went directly to the PayPal site (not from a link) and we did have an alert there & it had us answer emails/security questions and changed our password.
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Well, that was helpful, @ClassicMom98 . You were wise to go directly to the site.
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A few years ago, younger S’ paypal account WAS hacked. Someone bought $1000 worth of shoes in England. Back then, he didn’t have a credit card, so it was pulled from his debit/checking account. I was fortunate to run over to the bank before the transaction completed and they denied it for us. He wound up closing the paypal account altogether. $1000 is a lot to lose for a teenager!
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Wow. I got a request from a client today for an engineering drawing I’d done several years ago for him. This is the first time I’d heard from him since the project was finished. I sent the file to him and he responded with a nice thank you.
A couple of hours later, I got an email from him asking if I’d gotten his last email. ?? I said, yes, the one at 11:47 am?
Then he responded with, “Thanks for the response, I need to get an Apple gift card for my friend’s daughter who is diagnosed with Stage 3 metastasized breast cancer, she had lost both parents to the disease (COVID-19. It’s her birthday, but I can’t do this now, the stores around here are out of stock and all my effort purchasing it online proved abortive. I was wondering if you could help me get it from any store around you ? and I’ll reimburse you. Total amount needed is $500 Apple gift card and kindly let me know if you can handle this so I can tell you how to get it to her.”
Huh? Of course, right away I figured it was not legitimate, but it was his name (a very unusual one, including his middle initial). When I looked closer, the email address was hotmail.com instead of comcast.com. Same user name, though. It’s just too coincidental I would get that the same day I heard from him for the first time in years. I forwarded the fake email to him - I wonder if he was using public WiFi this morning?
Remember that if you use public WiFi without protection such as Verizon provides with a special app, you’re leaving yourself wide open to hackers. People don’t seem to understand this very real threat.
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Wow. That’s wild. And scary as hell.
Same thing happened here. Request for Amazon gift cards. User had a Comcast email…but the scam came from hotmail. Same claim…relative had cancer and they couldn’t buy these…could I help.
Oh…and this was a persistent scammer. They also sent me names of stores where I could buy them Amazon gift cards.
But the story was the same.
Interesting!
Any text or email requesting gift cards purchases of any kind is 99.9999999% scam. 
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Yes, for sure. It was just so weird, appearing to come from a client who I had corresponded with the same morning.
As with ML…it was weird because it was a familiar person. But the scam was obvious. And the Comcast to hotmail was a dead giveaway.
I looked again. Interestingly, the first email I think came from the scammer used the comcast address! So they hacked into my client’s account. I wonder if they hijacked it. Ugh.
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Could they have spoofed the address?
Oh the spammers need better language skills!
My boss got hacked once and everyone in the firm rec’d this exact email. Two nearly fell for it, but asked me if they could add the $500 to their expense report!
Crazy world!
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Probably.
I’ve gotten two phone calls from out of state this week asking me why I’d called them. I hadn’t.
Yikes.
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I don’t have verizon, but curious- what is the protection it provides?
It makes a public connection secure, so other people can’t access it. I love it. 
Is it automatic if you have Verizon? Or do you have to do something special to get it?
You have to get an app called “Digital Secure.” Then when you log onto public WiFi, you open the app and click on “Safe Wi-Fi” to activate the protection. Just remember that if it’s a place you frequent more than once, you may be connected to it automatically the next time you’re there, and you need to open the app again. There’s supposed to be an “always on” feature, but it seems like I still have to use the app every time.
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