Yikes—just got this one—an oldie but still in circulation from a friend’s email. Sent him a screenshot via text to let him know he’s had his email hacked.
“I am so sorry to bother you with my mails i need a little assistance from you, my bank account was blocked due to recent activities made by scammers which would take some days to get resolved. I got bad news this morning that I lost a childhood friend who is diagnosed with stage 4 mesothelioma cancer. I want to support the struggling family with a small donation. So I was going to ask if you could kindly help me send out by sending it to them anytime today I’ll refund later in the days. Kindly let me know if that will be possible.”
To quote the Robot from “Lost in Space,” “DANGER, Will Robinson!”:
This morning, I received an email for an online gift card for the Equifax Data Breach settlement. I know the credit report agency did experience a privacy breach, and I recall having received some legitimate correspondence about this in a class action opt-in.
I nearly clicked on the “redeem here” button on the alleged online card, and then looked at the email that wasn’t even close to what a legitimate source sending something like this and it happened to be in my junk folder. I reported it as a phishing attempt.
If that was wrong, so much for my less than $10 gift card!
Just be careful. These phishing attempts are definitely on the increase, and they are becoming more sophisticated.
As a further reminder, don’t click on ANYTHING in emails unless you’re 1000% sure they’re legitimate, even to UNSUBSCRIBE. Just delete without doing anything more to be safe.
D got an alert the other day that she had overdrawn her checking account. She got online and saw that $1500 in charges had been made using her debit card #. The card was not lost but in her wallet. Luckily, she convinced the bank to reverse all of the charges and they issued her a new card (and number, of course!).
All she can think of is that some business where she had used her card had been hacked and her info was obtained by baddies.
I sure hope that doesn’t happen to us (or anyone else) on the couple days per month when I pay our bills. I have no idea if “everyone” would refund the fees involved.
Do you know if that happened to your D, and if so, what the results were afterward?
I tend to use credit cards (vs debit cards) to never give businesses my account number, but if one of the cc companies had issues…
I also carry any
cards in my wallet in RFID sleeves. Many years ago our chip cards were read while we were walking in JFK airport and we saw lots of fraudulent local charges.
Is anyone else receiving notices from Southwest Airlines indicating “open for your mystery offer” or click here to see your discount, or sim.? Return address seems to be from SWA, but that is an usual type of email from them, so I’ve assumed they aren’t.
I got an email from a valid-looking Paypal address that was a link to pay an invoice for a specific model of phone I googled yesterday because my son needs one. I had tried to order one through the governmental program that gives him free service. It didn’t work, but I was afraid this invoice was connected to that attempt. Now I’m sure it’s not, but geez, that’s scary that they knew what kind of phone I was looking at. Too coincidental.
A couple of days ago I received an email from a friend I haven’t seen in a few years, but the email looked like a normal spam email. Instead of replying, I sent her an email double checking that it was spam - I manually put in her address, clicking on nothing to do so.
Not long afterward I got an email from the spammer. Her email must have been taken over by the spammer as mine wasn’t sent anywhere else as is usually the case if one replies to these.
To me, that’s scary, and now I hope they don’t have full access to mine. H doesn’t think so since we have a few safeguards on ours.
Came back from the gym to find that DH had been snookered by “Microsoft” telling him that his computer was infected and, if he’d give them permission to go on his computer, they could “fix” it. So he did.
I jumped in and turned off his computer. “Microsoft” called and said they couldn’t access it anymore. At my urging, DH told them that was just fine with him; he was done.
SMH. This man is an ivy league graduate and has a master’s degree.
Yup, my H who worked in IT over 45 years was snookered by sone blasted call center about his computer and paid them some amount under $200 to “fix” it. Argh!
My husband knows to ask about any unusual messages that pop up. And after numerous discussions, I think he understands that Norton will never contact him for renewal.
My mom not only was snookered and paying monthly, when I called the 800 number she had written down from them if to cancel it after her death, it was a sex line. I had it on speaker phone at the time to keep cleaning more, expecting to be put on hold. Not only was I surprised, H was in the kitchen and surprised too. “WHAT was that?” Uh, Norton?
Later when I looked up Norton’s real phone number to cancel her policy I was told she had been snookered by them too though. She had one computer, and was paying for protection for a whole network. It was quite frustrating. She was paying spammers and for some idiot who saw her as an easy money grab back when she signed up.
