Posted on 12/16/2023 5:47:12 PM PST by george76
A woman has told how she lost her life savings after she fell for a sophisticated text scam.
When Suni Wan received a message from her bank HSBC saying that there was some fraudulent activity on her account she called them straight back.
The text did not seem unusual as it appeared in the same thread that her bank usually messaged her in.
The message told her that a new device had logged onto her account and if it wasn’t her to call back immediately.
The man on the other end of the phone said that an S8 had logged onto her account, which worried Suni as she had previously owned an S8, which is a Samsung phone.
Concerned that someone had got hold of her old phone and was using it to try and get into her bank account, Suni rattled off all the information the “bank” asked her, including her name, address and date of birth.
They also asked her to generate a one time pass code and read it out so they could fix the issue.
“Then he said there’s been some unusual activities and he put me on hold for quite a while..
Suni only grew suspicious when the man on the line started asking questions about her cryptocurrency account Coinspot.
...
Suni rang HSBC immediately and asked them to freeze her account but the scammers had already taken $49,000.
...
“The industry has seen an increase in fraudsters using ‘text spoofing’ to deliberately falsify the telephone number to appear as a genuine bank text message.”
“Scam text messages can even appear in the same message chain as real messages from the organisation, making them even harder to spot.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Let’s say that a ring of thieves are stealing cars in a city. Eventually the city will take notice. A police task force will be formed to break up the ring.
Now let’s say that a ring of thieves are using phone calls and e-mails to scam innocent people out of millions of dollars. The government does…nothing. They don’t even bother to use the media to alert people to the threat.
Yes, most of these scams originate overseas. But I cannot believe that the government does not have the resources to jam - and then destroy - this filth.
I guess our government just doesn’t care.
I get up to a dozen a day I set up filters on their entire domain to sent them to Trash. It would not be too harsh if a hit squad wipe them out and the building they were operating from.
Contrast that with how the government dealt with coin and currency counterfeiters in the 19th century: https://www.usmarshals.gov/who-we-are/history/historical-reading-room/catching-counterfeiters
Recently, I got an email from my bank stating that my account balance was $0. VERY official looking from top to bottom. Several places to click...
Earlier this week I got a text from Discover Card saying they found fraud.
I didn’t respond. Instead I called the number on my card. It turned out to be legit.
Counterfeit? LOL According to the US Treasury, there is somewhere between 70 million and an upper limit of 200 million of counterfeit US currency out there.
It’s silly that the US Government even bothers with counterfeit anymore. The government creates 100 million an hour.
As for checks, the number of check kiters out there PALES in comparison to online fraud. And at my hometown bank if a Chinaman tried to withdraw money from a local account, there would have been questions.
Checks and cash, world was better.
I’m suspicious of every text I did not expect. I do a little bit of investigating if it seems even remotely useful to me. I especially don’t want to respond and get on someone’s spam list.
Dang I hope they do not screw up that movie.
Why do people fall for this crap? Always call your bank with the numbers you have, never take anything on a text or email until you verify independently.
Roman’s controlled the internet then, I believe.
There are scam busting YouTube guys who are pretty funny.
I get these things almost daily. I always ignore them.
Now I’m in jail.
Are you saying a Chinaman would be treated differently than anyone else ?
..
bkmk
Never click a button/link in an e-mail that you receive.
You’ll note that I did not say that the current situation was preferable to when we only had cash and checks.
My only point was to provide a reminder that counterfeiting and fraud existed before electronic banking.
It wasn’t elaborate. She was just an idiot.
Just two hours ago an old girlfriend was telling me in a phone conversation that her credit card was hacked but she just wanted to tell me about it, she didn’t want to discuss how to avoid it.
I have a flip phone and it is supposed to be able to connect with the internet. I don’t bother.
So when I get texts about my Bank of Missouri account (Traveled through the state ONCE in my life on a family trip out west when I was in high school) or my Pay Pal account (don’t have one) or my eBay purchase, (never use it), I know they are all scams.
We got one suspicious one from the bank we actually do business with so we called the local branch, the manager who we know personally, and told him. He said it was a scam and the bank ended up being all over it like white on rice.
You do know it was not actually the bank doing this.
If she wasn’t using HSBC, the scam woulda fell apart. Her fault.
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