2023, Business, Media, Uncategorized

Scam!

62 Comments

Ok. I am sick of it. The constant assault of fraudulent emails, computer alerts, and text messages purporting to want to help me, but only wanting my money!

I have countless trainings at work regarding all sorts of cyber crime, yet two weeks. ago I was nearly snared at home by a scammers saying they were from Microsoft and our bank. If they can nearly con me, with all this training, how many vulnerable people are being hurt?

A friend of mine lost $15,000 recently from a scammer that had her husband convert the money into bitcoin. Husband had what is probably a fraudulent email from our bank regarding a fraud alert on his business credit card last night. Our bank warned us about these scamming emails. He will phone the bank directly today to check things out.

Ever been scammed?

62 thoughts on “Scam!”

  1. I was scammed a couple years ago by a team who hooked me by my greed and reeled me in through my credulousness.
    They took about $800 from me. It was a cable tv thing. The cable company fixed the damage they did to my account, but the $$ were gone.
    In gratitude to the cable company, I held onto a subscription that was unneeded for almost 2 more years, adding $2000 to what I didn’t need to be spending.
    Lesson Learned? Hopefully.

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  2. Never been scammed unless you count trying to remove automatic subscriptions. The companies make doing that as frustrating as possible.
    And then there’s the old Columbia records, 12 albums for 10 cents (or was it a penny?).

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  3. Rise and Fall For It, Baboons,

    About 5 years ago I had a message from “microsoft” pop up on my computer and block all action. I had to call a number to make the computer work at all. I fell for it and called, then realized something was really wrong. I texted my son, the Techie, and asked for help. He told me to hang up on whoever it was and shut down the computer, which I did. It was a scam. They wanted my credit card number which I did not give them. They also wanted access to my computer which I started to give when I caught on. Phew. They did not get anything, and I reported the message to the State Attorney General Office because that is the entity that can take action on a scam.

    I have had clients fall for romance (money!) schemes. A High School friend of mine lost $7K that she did not have to one of these scams last Spring. This has hobbled her financially.

    Renee, your post reflects exactly how I feel about these things–if I can almost get scammed when I have tech help and am educated about these things, then what happens to more vulnerable people. I also signed up for a service that monitors identity theft and these scams. The monthly fee costs, but it costs much less than these scams, and if my identity is stolen I will need the help getting that remediated. So, so scary.

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  4. Lately the predominant scam attempt I’ve been getting on a weekly basis are emails thanking me/confirming a “purchase” or “subscription” I’ve made and for which I will be charged some very specific amount. These are of course not things I’ve purchased. In the email there is a link you can click if you have any problems with the purchase.

    I shudder to think of the problems that would ensue were I to ever click that link instead of just deleting the email.

    I’ve also been getting emails congratulating me on the gift I’ve earned or prize I’ve won. Those go in the trash as well.

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    1. I’ve been getting similar emails for months; like you, I just delete them.

      A few months ago a got an email from my bank confirming that I had changed the contact information to my accounts. I had done no such thing, so I called their customer service immediately. After verifying that I was in fact who I said I was, they transferred me to their fraud department. They immediately restricted all access to my various accounts, and began investigating.

      Turns out that someone in Florida had somehow gotten hold of my credit card information, and had hacked into my account on line and changed my mailing address to some town in Florida that I had never even heard of. This had instantly triggered the confirmation email I received from the bank. Fortunately, I saw that and reacted to it within minutes of the breach. But, apparently the fraudster wasn’t done yet. They called the bank, pretending to be me, and attempted to change other security information to gain access to other accounts I had with the bank. Of course, at that point the bank already knew that something was amiss, so no dice. But I had to jump through a lot of extra security hoops to be able to regain access to my accounts and get a new credit card. It was inconvenient not having access to any of my accounts for a full week, but it was a small price to pay for not having them cleaned out. I can’t help but wonder what might have happened had I not responded promptly to that first alert.

      I can’t even begin to contemplate the gall you have to have to dream up such a scheme and try to carry it out. I also wonder if they ever catch these a..holes.

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  5. I think just the late night infomercial I fell for about 30 years ago that sold me a big hunk of crystal masquerading as the best deodorant money can buy (or words to that effect). Twenty bucks for a rock that did no better stopping my body odor than Mennen Speed Stick. 😦 And boy, did I feel silly rubbing a wet rock across my armpits every day.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    2. It would be interesting to hear if other Baboons had purchased things from ads on late night television and what they had purchased. I never have.

      Early in my freelance days I was hired to write several commercials for K-Tel, the late night advertiser. Most of the products were music collections.

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      2. My dad, in his later years, had the tv on all the time; he and my mom had slept separately for years because of this. Every now and then he’d buy something. The week before I went to China to get YA, he called all over the country to find something he’d seen – a pocket translator. He had to make sure I got it before I left so he had to find someone who would Fed Ex it to me. It didn’t turn out to be much use; it would seize up and then all the preliminary settings you put in would be erased. My dad died 20 years ago but he would have loved the online translation options like google translate!

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  7. A new one for me was an Instagram message from a Ben Johnson who won millions in a lottery but wants to share it with the first 1000 followers. $50,000 each.
    There are pictures of him. A countdown of remaining slots to be filled. There is a real Ben Johnson lottery winner. But this is a scam.

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  8. Interesting… I just got this text:

    The USPS package has arrived at the warehouse and cannot be delivered due to incomplete address information. Please confirm your address in the link.  https://usps.com-helpz.top (Please reply to 1, then exit theSMS, open the SMS activationlink again, or copy the link toSafari browser and open it) The US Postal team wishesyou a wonderful day!

    Now why would the USPS have my cellphone number so as to be able to text me?
    Text deleted.

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    2. My son got a call from local police. He was accused of burglary not by them but by the woman who owned the house his car was parked in front of. He was at a Hunakkuh party at his ex wife’s house. She reported his license number to which is tied his phone number. Someone knocked on her door at 5:15 so she called the police and accused him of burglary. The police were mostly warning him. When I got my new driver’s license a month ago they recorded my phone number so I assume the police could do the same here.

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  9. I almost got caught at work once with one – and realized once I clicked through to a page that it was wrong. Reported it to our enterprise risk folks and deleted. As folks have said, I work in tech, I have been trained what to look for… which also means I have a service to monitor my credit and identity for theft – pretty much monthly it tells me that my email address(es) are exposed on the “dark web,” which is not a surprise. I just assume that at this point my email addresses and at least some of my passwords have been compromised due to security breaches – I just have to pay attention to other odd signals that would indicate someone has tried to use them (Walgreens wound up being one that locked me out for awhile, I’m guessing because someone was trying to impersonate me for nefarious reasons).

    Actually lost money? Not that I’m aware of. Unless you count a few dollars here and there to panhandlers – which I have also long since stopped for a variety of reasons.

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  11. many years ago, when I was just a lad, I had parked at the local mall and a kid approached selling magazine subscriptions. I ordered ‘Rolling Stone’ for 3 years for $20- only because I had a $20 in my billfold. Later on, I thought for sure I had been scammed, but no, I got Rolling Stone for several years after.

    Less years ago, Kelly and I went to an event in Minneapolis. Parked in a lot behind ‘First Avenue’ and a “parking attendant” approached asking for the cash. Heck, we didn’t know. Gave him the $10 or whatever. And then upon leaving and telling them we already paid, of course had to pay again to get out. We just never parked there again. Have you seen the Hawthorne Ramp?? It’s awesome! And skyway right into the Orpheum!

    This past summer was the couple in the car (With the 10 yr old!) offering me a gold ring. Then he wanted gas money, which I did follow him to a gas station and buy him a tank of gas (There was karma involved on my part; I had just got lucky and made $150 so I figured I could sacrifice $50 in gas even if I had my doubts) and at the gas station he offered more “gold” jewelry if I could loan him money to get back to Florida. I declined. But I did take a picture of their license plate. A week later, there was a news story about a man being scammed out of $20,000 BY THE SAME COUPLE. I reported my interaction. Course they were using a different vehicle.
    Four months later, Kelly and I are in the cities and getting gas AND THE SAME COUPLE OFFERS KELLY A RING! We ended up following them down Hwy 52, but who to call? I mean, at this point, what did they do and what could they stop them with? I called 911, I was transferred to that county law enforcement, who sent me to Highway Patrol, who called me back half a hour later. Well heck. That officer was going to stop at the truck stop we saw them exit at. Son told me that officer wasn’t going to be able to do anything even if they were still there.

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  12. “Amazon” called me about a $400 computer purchase I’d made on my (nonexistent) Amazon account asking if it was correct. I said, “No. I bought 10. Where are they?” My laughter got me an “F..k you” from the scammer.

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  13. My mom enjoyed using her computer, but she did struggle with it. And she’d get spam screens and such, but she never got sucked in, thankfully.
    She called me one day, with the scammers on one phone and me on the other phone and she put the two phones together so i could talk to them. I’m yelling to her, “HANG UP! JUST HANG UP!” It was pretty funny.

    The last few days, mom has been calling all the kids at all hours, to check and see if she left the iron plugged in. That’s a new one.

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  14. I don’t get many scam attempts. I have never been cheated. My bank called me once from their fraud center and gave me a code to enter and then call. They were checking on use of my card number they had blocked. They were right.
    One very dubious bank tried to make me pay for use of a card number I had canceled. I won.
    Clyde

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  15. Old fart TV like Hallmark and HGTV that Sandy watches are filled with scam health products and aging products. Almost every vegetable has one. Or the little pills that will give all your fruits and veg for a day. Tommy Copper brings back the old scam of copper to cure arthritis. My favorite is Cindy crawford’s melon from the Luberon that does not rot.

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  17. I just deleted 138 emails from scammers – everything from “Netflix” telling me my subscription has expired, to “Sirius” saying the same thing (I have never subscribed to them), FedEX inquiring about a package (don’t have one coming via them), Temu pallets (????), MacAfee subscription expiring (again, don’t have one), Costco telling I have won a prize, etc, etc. Sometimes there is an option to unsubscribe but mostly not. Those 138 emails all came over the last 12 hours. Nearly all the scammers sent at least 4 or 5 emails with the same notice.

    Many years ago (when I still had a PC), I fell for a scam and ended up needing the hard drive wiped. No money was lost, thankfully. But I became much more vigilant about checking email addresses from suspicious notices and deleting them unopened.

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      1. It seems apparent that there is a marketplace for scam programs whereby scammers are not even creating their own scams but buying them off the rack as a script along with a package of contact numbers. That’s why types of scams seem to come in bunches—there is a vogue in scams.

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  18. My wife was very close to four second cousins. When she went into care I sent them emails but they were afraid to open them. I tried to call them but they would not answer their phones. I snailmailed them letters with my return address. Many months later they learned by the family grapevine she was in care. Two called me all angry. I said why did you not at least open the letters. They said they thought I was asking for money.
    All the result of the fear of scams.

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  19. I empty so many emails from my inbox and spam folder everyday. I don’t count them. If it’s possible to unsubscribe, I do it. Some of those loop you back and ask for your email again. That makes me mad.

    And my physical mail! Last year I had a healthy savings account and I felt quite generous. I gave ‘til it hurt. Now I’m getting so many requests for money from all of those, plus others that I’ve never heard of. I decided last year to choose my favorites and give once. I pay attention to which ones are asking me and how much I have given. I stopped a few of them and they’re downright peevish about it.

    I get all the fake ones from McAfee (don’t have an account), Amazon, ShopKo (no account), UPS, FedEX, and many others. So many that if I don’t recognize it, it gets deleted.

    I did have my debit card number stolen once many years ago when I was still a Wells Fargo customer. They were prompt about alerting me to the fraud, asking me if I made the charge. As soon as I said no, they blocked my card and mailed me a new one. I’ve never had problems since.

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    1. I’ve read somewhere that in some cases the “unsubscribe” option will, in fact, ensure that you keep getting the spam that you’re trying to get rid of. Seems like you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

      Lately I’ve been getting a bunch of junk calls on my cell phone (which I use very little). I delete and block them, but somehow there’s a fresh supply within a day or two. And our landline (yes, we still have one!) gets way more junk calls than legitimate ones. Caller ID has proven to be a totally unreliable and completely useless feature.

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      1. We never answer our landline phone unless the caller is identified and it’s someone we know.
        My cellphone is set to only ring if the caller is on my contact list.
        Anyone else will have to leave a message and, if we choose to, we’ll get back to them.

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        1. I almost never answer my phone if I don’t recognize the phone number, if my phone says, “Unknown Caller,” or if it says, “Scam Likely.”

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        2. I am the same with the phone (cell and landline). If it’s unknown to me, I don’t pick up. If it’s actually someone I know, they can leave a voicemail. No voicemail? Then that number gets blocked. Hopefully no one I know lives in the 218 area code… I think I’ve blocked 100 of them over the past year!

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  20. I have received about 6-8 phone calls in the last three weeks from numbers I did not know, two today. All were from various clinics in Abbott NW calling about appointments. If I had not answered these, where would I be?

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    1. Yes, that’s the pitfall of that strategy. Husband had “fixed” my cell phone so that all calls from numbers not in my list of contacts went straight to voicemail. Consequently, all calls from various medical providers went straight there, and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get through to them. Not a good trade off, so I disabled that feature.

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    2. On our caller ID they would have been identified. The ones we don’t answer are the ones where the ID is “unavailable” or is simply a town or city.

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      1. On my cell phone, the number would show, and it would even say Health Partners, however, if the number wasn’t in my list of contacts, the message would still go straight to voicemail before I’d have a chance to answer the call.

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        1. Right, but it took me about three weeks to figure out why these calls didn’t ring on my cell phone. I thought it was the nurse who was charged with contacting me that was opting to leave a voice mail, I didn’t realize they didn’t have a choice.

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  21. What wears me out far more is the password business. Everybody wants me to have an account and then to have a complicated password. I dealt with two separate clinics yesterday and talked to a third today. I have three active clinic portals, two of which routinely tell me have new information. All three of the new clinics want me to create a portal. I will wait on two of them. One of them the dr. Told me wants me on to communicate with me. But yesterday my daughter was informed that her system will be charging $49 every time they send a new message. Her son’s psychiatrist wants him to message her that way. This is where so much of my stress lies. And I communicate with two people about Sandra that way.

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    1. I recently received a message from one of my clinics telling me that I will be charged $49 for telehealth calls – not all of them, just those that will require time and effort on the part of the provider or their staff. (So, most of them.) I’ve heard that this is due to the increase in the amount of telehealth calls that clinics are doing since the pandemic, and they’re not reimbursed for their time. The bill will be submitted to your insurance carrier first.

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  22. I couple of decades ago, I almost wired money to a friend “stranded in France”, and at the last minute called their home # to find they were right at home. (They were planning a European trip soon after that…) Whew.

    Most of what you’ve all said is familiar. I almost fell for something the other day. It’s part of what keeps me from getting a smart phone, so far.
    I wish the world were not like this.

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  23. I receive very few scam calls. What is the difference between me and all of you. Every so often I do answer a scam call, immediately recognize it as such, and hang up. No harm done.

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    1. The greater danger is answering scam emails. I am very cautious there. But I have so few friends anymore, personal messages are easy to sort out. Only one of my friends does emails. Businesses do emails. But I know them and how they operate. No scam email has gotten by me in a few years.

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  24. I’ve never lost money thank goodness. Twice in the last 10 years, I was contacted by the bank about what they thought might be fraudulent charges (they were correct) and they closed down that account number and issued new cards. And about 15 years or so back, somebody hacked my email and changed my password. They didn’t get anything out of that venture but it did take me several days to get my email back with the help of Hotmail.

    It helps if you are naturally cynical and suspiscious, traits I learned at my mother’s knee! Since nobody on the up and up has EVER wanted to give me something for nothing, I never believe it. And I also keep really close track of anything I”ve ordered, so all those “UPS is holding a package” emails are useless.

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  25. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reported criminal activities to the authorities; and I’m talking about agencies specifically charged with the duty of prosecuting those offenses.

    Nobody contacts me to gather evidence. Nothing ever happens. Your tax dollars at work.

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  26. I’ve had lots of calls and e-mails, but never thought they were for real.

    I have a Windows laptop now, but for many years my only computer was a Mac, and that made it pretty easy to spot potential fraud. As soon as they said they were from Microsoft, or referred to a Windows operating system, the scam was obvious.

    As a general rule, I don’t click on links in e-mails. Most of the sites I use are bookmarked, and I use the bookmark to get there and log in.

    And I’d probably be the last person to fall for a scammer purporting to be the IRS. They don’t call, they don’t text, they don’t e-mail, unless it’s just to say your return has been accepted. They send mail of the snail kind.

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  28. When my mom calls us from her Alexa, it shows up as “No Caller ID”. That’s how we know it’s her. But sometimes, it shows up as me and my siblings are surprised that it’s her then. Haven’t figured that one out yet. And the one sister who has her phone set up not to take unrecognized calls, never gets the calls from mom.

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