Meerkat Prompts: Scammers
| Dear darth_timon,We noted a transaction on your Paypal account. If this wasn’t yours, call to stop it. Otherwise, £ 759.99 will be deducted. | |
| Order Id: 561-SATJOUZ-207-HMBTUEUO-7787 Transaction Id: 41950SATJOUZ-207-HMBTUEUO78561 |
The above text is an email I received, which rightfully wound up right into my spam folder. It was quite impressively dressed up as the genuine article, but there are a few checks you can make to determine if an email like this is the real deal.
Firstly, PayPal would never address me as ‘darth_timon’. They know my name, and they’d use it. Secondly, it’s always worth checking the sender’s email address. Official communications from PayPal will come from a PayPal email address. Thirdly, if you are uncertain, go to the site in question – not via any links in the email, I hasten to add – and check your account history. This also works with any other banking, money transfer, or retail service. If you ever receive anything like this, from anywhere, never ever click on the links in the email (or for that matter, in a text message, if that’s how you’ve been contacted). Type in the business’s website and go to it via that. Contact them – again not via any email addresses or phone numbers in the email or text – to find out if the query is genuine.
I consider myself to be reasonably savvy when it comes to stuff like this, but that doesn’t mean I’m fool-proof, so it pays to be cautious in situations like this. I never answer calls from numbers I don’t recognise, under the expectation that if it’s important, the caller will leave a message. Sometimes calls come in via the landline, and our landline phone doesn’t have a screen, so I have no choice but to answer it. Most of the calls to the landline are sales pitches or scammers, and the best guidance I can offer with these is to avoid saying yes, or giving any affirmation, as one trick scammers use is to record you saying yes, and using that recording to use your identity. It’s best to hang up if you believe the call is a scam.
I rather despise scammers and spammers. They are modern-day snake oil salesmen. They are the evolution of the con artist in the street, the latest form of the hustler. They target anyone and everyone, and will latch on to the vulnerable, without a second thought for the lives they destroy. If they can fleece someone for their life savings, they will do so in a heartbeat. Often efforts to scam people are highly organised, involving call centres filled with people working off lists. I am not totally oblivious to how for some, they have been roped into something, but others do it because they are greedy, cowardly thieves, without any compassion for the vulnerable people they rob from.
Sadly, it seems this element of human nature will stay with us. As society changes, so too do the methods of con artists. With that in mind, it pays to be vigilant.
Its incessant. On emails, on my phone.
Telling me I’ve won a prize from Premier Inn or a delivery I for me has been rejected because I need to pay.
One time I actually nearly fell for one, though it embarrasses me.
I got an “official” looking email from Sky. Now in my defence, I’d literally phoned Sky that morning to discuss changes to my account, so when I got an email that offered me everything I wanted, I was like “OK”.
So I went on the official looking site and started to apply, giving the details you normally give.
Luckily for me there was an issue so I stopped and then nothing else. They didn’t get any money, I just ended the online chat.
Two days later I looked at my bank statement and saw that I had been issued an overdraft of £1800.
I don’t use overdrafts so called my bank. Apparently these operators had contacted the bank WHILE I WAS TALKING to them and arranged the overdraft to try and scam me.
The thing that REALLY pissed me of was the bank setting it up – I have different banks and accounts, so they used wrong information, like my email address(I have a few for reasons) and wrong phone number(I never use my bank email and phone number as they’re security, so I sign up with different ones). I asked why this happened, and it turns out the imposters had just convinced the person on the other end they were me and had changed this information.
I added extra security to all my bank accounts, giving them all secret passcodes that MUST be used even just to ask for a statement.
I get being scammed is partly on me, but if I can’t trust the bank to do its due diligence, then what the hell can you do?
The thing with the bank is unfortunately so typical of banks. They see £££, and so often don’t stop to think ‘is this right?’
The best scams (or worst, depending on where you stand) that I’ve had personally contact me are the ‘we’re calling from Windows about your PC’ scams. It seems Windows is now a company, not a product, and it’s amazing that they’re personally calling little ol’ me about a problem. They can’t tell me what PC it is, or what version of Windows it’s running, but there’s a problem only they can fix. Cue asking me to install some software. Usually I hang up, sometimes I lead them on, wasting their time.