This morning when H was trying to reach IRS — he called several times and got a spoof site trying to award him “freebies.”. He finally added a 1 before the 800 phone number and reached the IRS after a hold and then a 2nd hold before getting his Qs answered.
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good to know
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He reported the hijacked number to the IRS agent he spoke with and they will have their staff troubleshoot it.
Did he look up the IRS number on Google?
It’s not that these scammers hijacked the IRS’s numbers - rather, they hijacked Google’s search results. There have been reports of this earlier. Scammers have their (fake) numbers show up at the top of search results for airline companies, Amazon, etc. Google claims they’re investigating.
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The number was on IRS website.
Oh, ok. That’s even worse.
Today I read this one on my Nextdoor page.
A woman was at Trader Joe’s (in a high end neighborhood) and had her phone open to refer to her shopping list. Someone ‘bumped’ her, and stole her phone. Since it was open, the thief had access to her email and all her apps. Before she could do anything, the thief had changed her passwords and transferred $15k from her bank account to thief’s by Zelle. NOT insured.
Confirms I’m a genius for not having my accounts on my phone, not having Zelle or paypal or any other money transfer accounts (well, really proves I’m old).
Please be careful.
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I am a little skeptical. On my phone, even if the phone is unlocked, all those kinds of apps & actions require either my face or my phone password to get into the account. Even my medical provider accounts require that if I have been out of them for more than about 60 seconds.
I’m sure there is damage that could be done by stealing my unlocked phone, but I don’t think that much that fast.
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I don’t keep anything significant on my phone. I pay all my bills from my computer. My phone doesn’t have my bank info or my credit card info. Besides the risk of it being stolen, isn’t it also the case that the networks that phones use are not as secure as the networks that computers use??
If one is calling a number from a cellphone, they shouldn’t need to use a “1” first. Only in a landline.
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Clearly I’m not the expert because I don’t use those apps, but on Nextdoor there were a lot of people saying “But but but…” and the woman was sure it was because they were in her email and could change the passwords.
Supposedly there were 3 phones stolen at TJ’s that afternoon, no camera in the store to catch what was going on.
I would also think Zelle could trace the transfer to another account and give that info to the police, but not sure how long that would take.
I’m just not a big phone person so do banking on my home computer, pay bills on my computer, etc. I don’t have a lot of apps on my phone, and I don’t store any credit card numbers on it. I am old.
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I only store my wife’s credit card numbers my phone. I’m married.
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My son tells me that my iPhone is actually more secure (from an IT/hacking perspective) than my old home computer (phone snatching aside!). Then again, I have an older computer than most people, likely…!
Good grief - total bs nonsense! And it started out looking like it came from Yahoo until I looked further -
Dear Customer, xxx (my actual email address)
I am the representative of customer support center at Yahoo.
We have received 42 complaints about your Email
account recently.
E-mail account : xxxxxxx@yahoo.com
Complaints Received from : Outlook.com,gmail.com
Complaints : Sending Malwares and viruses
There are thousands of spam emails that were sent out from your email
address in the last 3 days. We require your clarification now to avoid
mail account deletion within 48 hours.
we recommend you to install an antivirus, we will choose the best one for you.
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I got this text and promptly deleted it. My husband got the same text but with a twist: it was embellished with emojis! 
The texts were sent from some hotmail accounts, more than likely spoofed.
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My husband got a similar text a couple of days ago. He almost fell for it because he’d ordered something recently. I’ve trained him well - he knows not to click on anything until he shows it to me!
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I got that text around 20 times over a short period of time – a week or so. But now it seems to have stopped. My phone captures texts that are likely spam and segregates them for me.
I got that one too, and it confused me because we get packages from USPS almost every day. But, I hadn’t gotten any text (as usual) that there was anything due that particular day or the next, so I figured it was a scam. I told H if he ever got something like that to ignore it. Hopefully he remembers…
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I got the USPS one twice this week by text.
I got one on email that my TEMU package was waiting for delivery (that went right to SPAM)
I have received one in the past that a package I sent couldn’t be delivered and did I want to pay $3 to have it returned to me. I had sent a 2 day package to someone and when I did it said there was no such address (it was new construction housing) and I forgot to take the tracking slip-my bad). It was to my friend’s daughter and I hadn’t heard whether it was received, but I finally did hear from friend who lives in WI that her daughter in FL did receive it!
Really, life is too short for this!
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