Well another month has gone by and the ingenuity of the phishers and scammers continues to astound me. Since posting on this subject a month ago (Watch out for Fraud! Watch out for Scams! Watch out …..), we have continued to have variations on the same theme continue both by phone and by e-mail.
Over the phone, my wife fielded the “Hi, this is your friendly computer technician alerting you to unusual amount of activity on your computer…”
Then came another of those e-mail scams from the traveling friends who ran into trouble in a far off land and needed help (of a financial nature, of course, to help them get out of trouble). We’ve seen these types of pleas at various times before. They generally look like variations of this:
Thieves stole everything. We’re okay. Canadian embassy will reissue our passports but we need money to pay for our hotel and hospital bills. We hate to bother our friends but have no where else to turn … Please contact us and we’ll give you instructions on how to wire us the funds ….
Reading that your friends are in trouble is always unsettling but especially so if you know that they haven’t left the country!
Along the way, I have been told various bank accounts have encountered coding errors, etc. and need me to submit critical identity information right away to help some cyber contact person get me right back on the correct path right away. I’m sure that they would be most helpful once they had sufficient identity information to contact my bank and steal everything!!!
Today’s version of the bank account fraud e-mail which I received today looked like this (links deactivated):
—–
Dear Customer,
Your account has been SUSPENDED, as an error was detected on your profile
The reason for the error might be:
1. You have changed your billing address.
2. You have Submitted incorrect information during bill payment process.
3. Your credit/debit card has expired.
4. You didn’t update your *** profile.
We need you to update your information here
Thank you for your cooperation
—-All of the banks and credit card companies have fraud investigation units so, with a few clicks, off went another fraudulent e-mail to the fraud unit of my bank branch. Hopefully, someone gets a nice message from an anti-fraud detective with a warrant.
