I just received 3 text messages from M&T (not M&T Bank) informing me that $2,387.76 was charged on my credit card at Wallgreens and my account has been locked and that I should click on a link starting with the name ‘degaetanos’ (I won’t post the whole link just in case it’s my Nigerian uncle who left me a $3 million inheritance and one of you guys tries to steal it).
I don’t have any accounts or credit cards with M&T (or M&T Bank).
And Walgreens spells their name with one L (but what do they know).
And when I Google the link it comes up with a bunch of Italian restaurants and one strange link that looks like a bunch of Chinese characters.
Well, I like Chinese food and I love Italian food, so I’m going to click on the link. I mean, what could go wrong?
I got one of those last year from Norton, telling me that they had just billed my credit card to renew my anti-virus subscription…… and that I was to call a certain number if I had any questions.
I probably responded in exactly the wrong fashion; I called the number.
Some guy located in India answered the phone.
After telling him that I don’t use Norton products, and haven’t in almost 15 years, he told me that he was going to have to look at my computer and asked me to download a certain program so that he could do that.
That’s when I said “Sorry, Charlie” and hung up.
I no longer remember the program he referenced, but I did look it up at the time- it’s a program designed to allow a third party to take control of your computer.
Boy am I glad I hung up before downloading that program!!
But come to think of it, that’s about the time I started receiving spam text messages for ED medications and penile enhancements…. So there’s that…
When I’ve had a chance to talk to those Norton or other computer fixers, a simple question stops them: ‘What kind of computer is it?’, then after laughing at the idiots, you can hear others in their background, they usually hang up, but sometimes get pretty upset when asked why they are trying to hurt people, sometimes lots of nasty language not allowed here… But it becomes tedious, don’t even answer, just a quick off/on hook to restore the quiet…
I got one of those last year from Norton, telling me that they had just billed my credit card to renew my anti-virus subscription…… and that I was to call a certain number if I had any questions.
I get these texts about 5 times a day. Ditto for emails. Quite insane. Have reported and blocked them endlessly, but of course they just change their email and send again.
I have had my identity stolen twice already. The first time seemed to be related to paperwork improperly disposed of for the closing of real estate. The gift that keeps on giving comes from the data breach at Equifax. At least putting my credit on hold puts a dent in much of those efforts, though some notices of fraudulent account opening attempts do still get to my house.
I get phone calls telling me something has been purchased on my Amazon account, and I need to call them right away if it wasn’t me making the purchase.
So, I stroll over to the computer, pull up Amazon, and see that no orders have been placed on my account in months/years. End of inquiry.
Usually looking at the address that sent the message is a big clue that it wasn’t Amazon/Visa/Walgreens/Walmart or whoever.
Not always. The Norton ones can be pretty good. Eldest is in cyber security and was here when I got one that was not automatically identifiable as fraudulent. He did the hovering over the address but had to go further to see that it was sent with mal intent. Can’t tell you what he did.
He has told me to just send them to junk. Do not try to unsubscribe, since all that does is tell them that they have a valid email and they will hound you even more.
Happily, we have nothing Norton, which makes it easier.
Well, I like Chinese food and I love Italian food, so I’m going to click on the link. I mean, what could go wrong?
Your device could be fed a virus or a Trojan horse, your email address could be verified. Most likely the hackers planted some code on the hapless site you looked at.
so I’m going to click on the link. I mean, what could go wrong?
The real fraud that is going on right here at home is Bank of America’s exclusive EDD accounts.
A billion dollars in fraudulent transfers have been taking place from patients with EDD disability accounts and Bank of America refuses to investigate. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/road-recovery-edd-…
I know patients that have thousands of dollars fraudulently transferred out of their accounts only to receive a computer letter from BoA that says the investigation has been closed with no explanation.
I would submit that a few years from now we will be reading about employees at Bank of America that have manipulated funds or sold EDD accounts’ information.
He actually forwarded it to his work computer and ran some sort of diagnostic on it. Spent about 15 minutes analyzing, as it was better than the average spam. Perhaps he was bored.
I have gotten pretty good at weeding out phishing attempts, having been exposed to the WWW for many hours every day for decades now. DH, however, who for those same decades primarily was on work computers for work emails, is a bit of a novice in this wild world web. He falls for scams quite a bit. “Did you buy something via PayPall?” “No, it’s a phishing scam, just sent to junk and mark as phishing.” Got caught up and lost money to one of those go out and get gift cards and send us the info. I was out of the house at the time. Not stupid…has a degree from MIT…but naive for sure. Isolated by the work world for much too long with his 10-12 hour days.
He actually forwarded it to his work computer and ran some sort of diagnostic on it. Spent about 15 minutes analyzing, as it was better than the average spam. Perhaps he was bored.
That’s beyond my pay grade, I just check to make sure it’s a legit website. Some spam comes from the spammer’s site but often they upload the malware to unprotected websites so you don’t see their IP. For example, say there is a legit website…