phish·ing/ˈfiSHiNG/
Noun: The fraudulent practice of sending e-mails purporting to be from legitimate companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as credit-card numbers, online.
Have you ever gotten an email from someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince trying to smuggle money out of the country, or the administrator of the South Sudanese lottery commission?
The emails tend to be similar. You’ve won the lottery, but need to pay the transfer fee and applicable taxes before the money can be sent, and by the way, they need your checking account information to transfer the money out of your account. Or, the elderly wife of the Reverend Saint Whateverhisnameis has the entireGDPof some small African country in her bank account that her dear, departed husband stole honestly, and she needs a trustworthy soul in the States to accept the transfer and your reputation proceeds you.
Yeah, people still fall for it. It’s called Financial Darwinism. Only the strong shall retire.
Yesterday(as of this writing, not as of your reading), I got my first-ever phishing phone call.
The conversation went something like this:
Worthless scum scammer: Hello, you’re schedule to receive a delivery at10:30 this morning and I need to verify your information.
Me: What delivery?
WSS: Is this Linda, L-I-N-D-A?
Me: Yes. (Please note, I am very much a guy and clearly sound like it.)
WSS: You buy international. I’m scheduling delivery. Are you at (lists house number correctly, but no street or city).
Me: What’s getting delivered?
WSS: A brand new Mercedes.
At this point, I wanted to play, but I had to get to work, so I hung up.
Worried that I may have made the wrong decision, I called my wife to see if she made a side trip to buy a luxury car while she was running errands last week, but she said she didn’t. I’m not sure I believe her. I think that it may have just slipped her mind.
It’s worrisome that some scammer call-center in Nigeria is buying lists of potential marks in theUS and calling them. I much prefer my scammers to send emails.
Have you ever gotten a 419 phone call?
Yes, I agree that’s worrisome, because some people (like me) might tend to get flustered and accidentally give out some information that we think to be innocent, but could be used in nefarious ways.
Glad you gave us a heads-up….don’t you think these people could much more easily just earn legitimate money by actually working. Seems like all this scamming is hard work!
Yeah, it’s easy to confirm information and answer questions.
Good move by hanging up. No need to deal with such clowns, though I admit that the entertainment value of playing with them might be pretty good:)
What’s unortunate is that this is the type of thing that might prey on the elderly, that’s my first thought anwyway.
I play with 419 scammers by email on a regular basis. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be catching on.
The idea of “playing along” sounds like fun just to see how far would this guy try to swindle you.
It’s amazing how these guys make money by scamming people. I feel sorry for the ones who are not aware and may fall into this trap (most of the time are elderly people)
It wouldn’t be that difficult…all they would really need is an account to sales genie with a fake Subscription Account Number (SAN Number). I am actually shocked we haven’t heard about this in greater detail – maybe you were an Guinea pig lol
Oh you bet, I won so many lotteries and received notification. So many military leaders died leaving money for me. Gmail is perfect and don’t let these come in to your inbox. Yahoo is lacks here.
Congrats! I wish I could win the Nigerian lottery. Again. 🙂
I’ve never gotten a phishing phone call that I’m aware of. That would move it from being irritating to infuriating for me.
It’s a shame my phone isn’t rigged with a “electro-shock the guy at the other end” switch.
Hi , it is dangerous to even talk to the scammer we nearly lost a lot of money luckely we googled all the info. They used a internal server of wayn travel and DHL con me. Be carefull to pay money. kind regards