Jo
Skunk
Forest Ranger
Posts: 2,045 
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Post by Jo on Mar 28, 2023 16:21:41 GMT
Got this in my Comcast account email this morning. I have to say it's pretty well done, enough to immediately make me check my bank account to see if I had somehow ended up with insufficient funds. I hadn't, not by a long shot. Then I looked at the return email address which is always the first thing you should do. <user7@purplehatinstitute.com> Really? Really, scammer, that's the best you can do? The body of the email is pretty professional but couldn't you have picked a better email provider than purplehatinstitue.com? Like that isn't a warning bell!
One of the reasons I'm posting this is because my Steam Buddy, my 12 year old grandson, just got scammed. Someone messaged him on Discord, one of several servers he frequents, and identified themself as Steam Support. Told him his account was scheduled to be deactivated and that he was going to be blocked and banned and that they needed his user name and password. Instant panic for the kid so he gave it to them. "Ah ha! An easy mark!" said the scammers and then told him that they needed him to buy a Steam gift card to fix the problem. They asked him how much money he had and he said $15. Not good enough. They'd need at least a $50 gift card to fix it. At this point the kid is in full panic mode so he went to his mom to ask for help. His mom immediately contacted the real Steam Support and in less than 24 hours his password had been reset and his account and games were safe with no damage done. Steam sent an email explaining that they would never contact a member using a third party social media account, they only use the email address connected to a Steam account and they would never, NEVER, ask for a Steam gift card to "fix" any problem. In the final bit of his panic, he told his Mom they needed to call JoJo, which is what the little grandkids call me, to warn me about this scam. He was so pissed that he was yelling and he's a normally a quiet kid.
So valuable life lesson learned. He's only 12 years old and, like most kids, when someone claiming to be an authority figure approaches him, he takes what they're saying as the truth and never questions it because he's a kid. But he's added a healthy dose of skepticism to his world view which will serve him well throughout his lifetime. Ask questions. Fact check. Ask for proof. Ask for help. And it's not just kids who get scammed. That's why AARP posts so frequently about scams.
It's really hard as a parent/grandparent when you see your kids having to learn a lesson the hard way. He'll never forget this but he'll be better off having experienced it. I'm going to email him my fake Comcast ploy so he knows everyone runs into scammers sooner or later and that he wasn't singled out because he's a kid. I think we need to have a talk about his car warranty expiring, Microsoft calling from their India office to tell him he has a virus on his computer and the IRS needing a Target gift card so he won't be arrested.
It's a jungle out there!
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pennmom
Bear
Chief Ranger
[TI0] IT'S FIVE O'CLOCK AND ALL'S WELL
Posts: 16,654
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Post by pennmom on Mar 31, 2023 21:22:37 GMT
I keep getting Scams claiming they are from Amazon and that there is a problem with my Subscribe & Save credit card or something similar.
Amazon has a CS site to forward these emails to so they can be aware of whats out there and try to track scammers
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Jo
Skunk
Forest Ranger
Posts: 2,045
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Post by Jo on Apr 1, 2023 0:44:42 GMT
I keep getting Scams claiming they are from Amazon and that there is a problem with my Subscribe & Save credit card or something similar. Amazon has a CS site to forward these emails to so they can be aware of whats out there and try to track scammers I don't think I've gotten an Amazon one yet but I get lots from Best Buy, Staples and Walmart. I win a lot of gift cards according to my email. And I have a lot of packages pending delivery with FedEx. I think that Nigerian Prince has upped his game.
I have a really old Juno email account, 25+ years, that I only keep because that's the address that CitiBank has and all I get is spam. Here's just today's bunch: orionsrose, I got two Nortons today and one McAfee yesterday except they misspelled Mcafee. I have Nortons but only connected to my gmail account so I know it's a scam on Juno. At least there aren't any about helping me with my ED problems today. The email from Juno is actually a scam email and not from the actual Juno. I get the occasional scam email on Comcast but gmail catches everything. I don't even know I got any spam on gmail until I empty my junk folder.
At least I don't have a landline anymore - that was a hotbed of spam. I've gotten one spam call on my cell phone and two spam text messages in over two years. It just never ends. If these people put this much energy into doing good deeds, the world would be a better
place.
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Post by orionsrose on Apr 1, 2023 6:07:42 GMT
If these people put this much energy into doing good deeds, the world would be a better
place.
And that says it all right there! People have time/energy to do good, but sadly greed has a stronger pull than kindness. Ripping Hair Out |
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Post by Valkara on Apr 1, 2023 8:18:14 GMT
I got THREE phone calls yesterday from "Services Canada" to tell me my SIN number had been deactivated.
That's a scam, of course. The only way your SIN card can ever not be valid is if you're either dead or no longer a citizen. To "reactivate" it, all they want is basically everything necessary to commit identity theft. The only agency that ever has the right to ask for your SIN number is Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) or certain other government agencies.
It's mindblowing that SIN cards are considered valid forms of ID for Elections Canada. EC should NEVER be allowed to have access to voters' SIN numbers or banking or tax information.
The hilarious ones are when somebody with a thick Indian accent tells me that he's "John Mackenzie" and he's calling about either an urgent problem with my computer, or wants to give me a low-interest rate credit card, wants to sell me windows and doors, or whatever else (it flummoxes them when I tell them I already have windows and doors, or that I live in a treehouse and have no need of windows or doors).
I finally started laughing at them and told one guy, "Look. We both know that your name is not John Mackenzie and you're not Canadian. We both know that you're sitting in a boiler room in India and your purpose is to scam me out of as much money as you can because you think I'm that stupid. We both know that you're a criminal and I want you to get the fuck off my phone and never call back."
Whereupon he tried very earnestly to convince me that his name really was John Mackenzie. So I gave him a stream of expletives in a loud enough voice that his fellow crooks in the room should have heard, and he finally hung up.
Sometimes it's a woman who tries this. I told her, "I know you're a scammer, so just go away."
She pretended not to understand, and said, "But I am already away from you."
So she got the benefit of my four-letter vocabulary and I hung up on her.
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Jo
Skunk
Forest Ranger
Posts: 2,045
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Post by Jo on Apr 1, 2023 19:42:16 GMT
Here's how to have some fun with those pesky telemarketers:
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