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 ...
Just this morning I got the following.
1. Your Space is_Full. Upgrade NowTo Protect all yourFiles!. from bhawn.+gopod274@prva.pub
2. Track YourDelivery From UPS NOW.. from bhawn.gopod204@tehnomanija.pub
3. Introducing StopWatt: Save Energy&Reduce YourBills. from bhawn.gopod229@telegraf.pub
4. Re: Extend your account For Free Now!! from bhawn.gopod284@feide.pub
Normally they come from email addresses ending in .de, edu.pl or .tech. It seems that I ignored them long enough and they may have switched to a new address in a lame attempted to beat spam filter. I would love to be smart enough to go after them and destroy their operation.
That’s a source that I don’t believe I have ever seen before, but I can’t be sure. I will often just delete everything in the junk folder without performing a perfunctory perusal of the junk folder. It’s junk, it’s gone. 🤣
I don’t think it’s cruel. These people ruin thousands of lives every year. They are almost as bad as politicians.
I recently was notified my phone was being tracked. When I checked into it with my limited knowledge of knowing how, I found out they were all tracking me somehow through my health care provider.
I don't use my phone for any of that.
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