Our IT department at work puts out a news letter every week, entitled "Scam of the week". I had patted myself on the back that up to now I had avoided falling for any of them.
Well, pride cometh before a fall. Yesterday an announcement came up on Facebook that due to economic conditions, the San Antonio Shoe Company, better known as SAS, was going out of business. They were having a clearance sale, everything must go, both from their factory outlets and physical stores. Everything was heavily discounted.
I was sorry to hear that they were going out. They are one of the last remaining shoe manufacturers still based in the USA. And they make good everyday shoes which are kind to sensitive feet, which I have. So I placed an order. Everything looked legit. But it wasn't.
One of my sisters sent me a link to SAS shoes announcement that they were NOT going out of business. They had asked Facebook to pull the fake ad, and supposedly they did. But it was still showing up. I felt like a total fool, and called my credit card company. They were sympathetic but said that since I had initiated the charge, they couldn't stop payment until I failed to receive the merchandise after a reasonable length of time. After which they would be happy to credit my account.
I looked in my e-mail and their was an acknowledgement of my order. With contact information in Chinese characters. Gotcha. It's not my life savings, or anything. But I will have to keep an eye on the credit card account to make sure nothing else gets charged to it before the charge is able to be credited back. And then probably ask for a new card and account number. And remember that if a bargain it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Katherine, call the credit card company and either freeze or cancel the card. We have had credit card # s compromised and they can send a new card and will credit the fraudulent charge to the new account number. Or they can freeze it if you want to wait the specified time period but prevent future charges on the number. They are probably selling the credit card # . I’m surprised your credit card company didn’t suggest freezing it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Anne. I did call them back this morning to freeze the card and ask for a new one.
DeleteKatherine, I don't buy anything on or through a Facebook ad. I've seen some scams that make me distrust anything from FB. It's a cesspool.
ReplyDeleteFrom now on, I'm not buying anything from a FB ad, either. If I see something I like, I'll go to the actual company site rather than clicking on the link in FB.
DeleteI think it's odd that FB can't seem to pull a fraudulent ad, even though they said they would. Either they are just saying it to get people to stop complaining, or they don't have control of their own site. Either way, it's not good.
I saw one obvious scam. It involved a beautiful detailed motorized moving plastic model of a V8 engine. What I estimated to cost a few hundred dollars was advertised at $39. This ad reappeared under various guises for a year. I don't know if they ever took these ads off or whether the Master Algorithm just decided not to show it to me anymore.
DeleteThanks for this thread! I sometimes get ads from companies I buy from on FB. I will also go to the site directly now. Helpful info.
ReplyDeleteKatherine, please don't feel badly for getting scammed. These grifters are social engineers, with a sort of fiendish ingenuity for playing us. You are probably a good deal more aware of these things than many of our contemporaries. Any or all of us could be the next one to get fooled. Unfortunately, it requires constant vigilance, and even then there is no guarantee we won't fall prey.
ReplyDeleteJim, I just have to look on it as an Lenten exercise in humility, Lol
DeleteHere's a bit of synchrony. An opinion article in the NYT appears on scams.
ReplyDeleteThe Victims of Scammers Aren’t Stupid. They’re Human. https://nyti.ms/3NtdG3C
Interesting read. I think she is on target here when she compares those who get scammed to those deeply immersed in conspiracy theories: "Those who buy into conspiracy theories such as QAnon revel in being the ones smart enough to see past the lies of a world where things are not as they appear."
DeleteIn fact, I think those who get scammed by family members over time get used to seeing lyingbas something normal, and the truth as dangerous and much worse than everyone thinks. A conspiracy theory that tells them that there are Jewish space lasers, reptilian creatures running the World Bank, or pedophile Satanists in the Democratic Party makes them feel like they've uncovered the Awful Truth.
That's an interesting article. Our book club read the book "Bad Blood" about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. It was amazing that she fooled all those people. I think she did believe that success was just around the corner.
DeleteI can't imagine what it would be like to be lied to continually by your own mother, as author Liz Scheier had been. Her book might be a good one for the book club.
Holmes, as I understand it, refused to believe her profs--after one semester of college!--that her gizmo wouldn't work. One of them did support her idea in theory and sat on her board. Were they fellow scammers? Or did he scam her into thinking her invention was viable? And even if you're sincerely deluded, is that an out if you defraud people?
DeletePeople will believe what they want quite readily. See it all the time in my cancer group. Scammers are very good at offering lots of positive attention and bullsh*t info at their clinics. Legit specialists are devoid of empathy and minimize your concerns.
One of Holmes' biggest supporters was George Schultz, who had held four different cabinet level positions under several administrations. By this time he was quite elderly. It seemed to be a pattern that she appealed to certain older men, maybe they felt flattered. She caused a rift between Schultz and his grandson, Tyler, who worked for Theranos for a time. Fortunately they made their peace before Schultz' death, and George admitted that Tyler had been right about Holmes.
DeleteIf one was sincerely deluded and people were defrauded, they were still harmed, and it doesn't fix things just because one was a dumb@$$. Seems like a case of Dunning Kruger effect if you way overestimate your own abilities.
The podcast The Dropout, on which the movie is based, featured Tyler. He seemed like a very decent kid.
DeleteThe NYT article is very interesting.
ReplyDeleteIn the town where I grew up there was a young girl, about 2 or 3 years younger than I, who developed the habit of telling stories that had little or no basis in fact. She was a very attractive girl well- liked by adults and other kids. So calling her a pathological liar would give a false impression.
She was born out of wedlock, but her father died when she was only a few years old. However his parents allowed her to have his last name, and even befriended her when she was a child. They lived elsewhere. This girl’s mother was sickly and passed away in a few years while she was only a child. She was taken care of by her grandmother who was homebound. So you can see that there was great potential for her to invent stories about her parents whom few people knew, especially with almost no one around to contradict her.
Of course sooner or later, various people to a greater or lesser degree, began to understand the situation. However, they had great sympathy for her and so they did not confront her.
She eventually married and moved to a nearby town. It might be nice to think that as she grew up she would have left her lying habits behind. However her husband had his faults that made keeping a job difficult; they had a lot of children because that helped support them. She had learned a lot of lying skills that helped her in dealing with government agencies, etc.
The New York Times article raises the question of how she dealt with her children. What stories did she tell them, and how long did it take for those to unravel. The kids eventually acquired reputations as bad kids who were always getting into trouble.
This little bit of scammery showed up as a text on my cell phone today. It is from a phone number - no person identified. It reads:
ReplyDelete" 'AMAZON-Order;-Your card is charged of $2786.00 for Canon EOSR5 Mirrorless Camera order-id OHSF28322CA on 3-28-2022. CONTACT (865)381-5484 if NOT YOU"
It plays on financial anxiety: "OMG, I didn't order that camera! Who is ordering that camera and charging my Amazon account?!"
The extra punctuation around the words "Amazon" and "order" may be an attempt to evade my cell carrier's spam filters from filtering out this message as a scam; for all I know, this is just the tip of the iceberg of attempts to reach me by these offshore pirates or Russian mobsters or whoever they are.
The financial anxiety is the bait; presumably, the hook is to get me to call the phone number, at the other end of which will be a scammer who will ask for my credit card number or a large check or some such.
I do have an Amazon Prime account, so it's not completely far-fetched. I assume the scammers know this, in the same way that any legit company knows much about me by analyzing publicly for-sale data sold by my friends at Amazon, credit card companies, Facebook et al.
There's bazillion phone scams out there. I'm sure you went into your Amazon Prime account to be certain there were no unauthorized charges. There have been some lately where we got a call that was muffled and full of static so you couldn't hear the first part. All you could hear was the part which said "...to avoid legal action, call this number immediately." You're right they prey on financial panic.
DeleteEven worse are the ransom ware attempts on your computer. We've had a couple of those, they're trojan horses or something, even though we have virus protection. Had to just unplug the computer and take it to a guy we know who has a de-bugging business.
For years, my mother would slam the phone down on these scammers. Then, one day, she started listening to them. Her dementia was taking over. Luckily, she never followed through on any of these scams. I think there's a goldilocks zone for the scammers when the victim is still able to complete financial actions but too impaired to see through the scam.
DeleteWe don’t ever answer our landline. It goes to VM. We return the 10% of calls that are legitimate. I have set my privacy setting on my iPhone to not ring or vibrate for calls that aren’t in my contacts. Every day I go through those and block the numbers that aren’t legit and occasionally add a new legit contact to my contact list. Usually 2-6 calls/day and by doing the check daily it’s easy to keep up. Very few are legitimate. I doesn’t take me more than a minute or so to block the numbers if I do it every day. At least then they are forced to use a different robo number.
DeleteI haven’t figured out yet how to block scam texts. Most of those I get are sent to someone named “Jennifer “ who is frequently the recipient of money in different forms and the only thing she has to do is click the link. They show up as texts from contacts even though they aren’t in my contacts.
But, more synchrony, yesterday I got two identical text messages from my own cell phone number. First time that’s happened although we have gotten calls from our own landline phone #. The article about this text says the link took him to a Russian website. The govt has been warning about the likelihood of massive cyber attacks coming from Russia because of Ukraine.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/28/22999719/spam-texts-own-phone-number-verizon-att-tmobile
My messages were the same - BUT - with a twist. The message was identical except for the fact that it also had an image of a contact “card’ for my son, and clicking on that image brought up his real contact info - phone, email and home address. So I will be following up with Verizon also.
I never normally click on any links FB ad, email, texts, pop up ads etc. I always go to the websites directly. I clicked on the contact card image for my son to see what happened ( holding my breath) and now it seems that this particular scam text might be unstoppable if they get into the contact lists. I’ve changed my gmail and Apple ID passwords. I found myself in my iPhone contacts listed by my first name and last name initial. I never added myself into my contacts. So I think someone else’s phone was hacked and my information picked up. Not one of my sons’ phones because they list me as Mom. :)
We got rid of our landline when my mom died, and I use the block feature a lot. However, if you block all but your contacts, the cops and hospital can't reach you. Neither can your family if they happen to ge calling on a stranger's phone in an ER. Since Raber's heart attack, I have been hinky about the possibility if blocking all but contacts.
DeleteLast spate of robots I got were from Nebraska last year. What were you up to, Katherine??? :-)
We don’t ever answer our landline. It goes to VM.
DeleteThat is my strategy for the landline, too. It goes to voice mail after seven rings. I can pick it up earlier if it is a legitimate number. Most unwanted numbers don't wait that long.
I simply don't answer my iphone; it is only used to place calls.
I don't receive that many calls on either my land phone or my iphone. I guess the callers have figured out that I am not easily reached.
Betty, being the extravert, often answers her mobile phone; so she gets a lot more phone calls than I do.
The phone callers have their strategies which maximizes the likelihood of their getting a response.
Jean, LOL, I get calls from little towns in Nebraska which are barely even zip codes. Pretty sure they don't actually originate there.
DeleteJack, our landline goes to VM after 2 rings. I hate to listen to the ringing! If someone actually leaves a message we can hear them speaking and if they sound legit, pick up. It's really a form of call screening. But that almost never happens. About 90% of the legit callers are in our contacts and the "voice" announces the name when the call comes in. If we are out, we check the caller id list and, if there are messages, listen to them. Many of the VM messages are also scams and want us to call them back. We get far fewer scam landline calls than we used to. I'm not sure why - maybe because we were out of town a year ago for almost 4 months, the VM box filled up and maybe our number was somehow dropped. But I doubt that because they usually use robo-dialers. However their software does note if the phone picks up, even by VM, so. who knows. But we get far more scams calls on the cell phones now compared to a year ago. Maybe so many people have dropped landlines that they no longer bother. The prefix for our landline is only for landlines, isn't ever used for cell phones. We've had the same # for almost 50 years, way before cell phones. Once they came in, they had to create new area codes for them around here.
DeleteUpdate on the scam texts from my own phone. Apparently the problem is with Verizon, which is our carrier. They are working with the feds to try to identify the source, while also trying to figure out how it as accomplished and fix the security issue.,
ReplyDelete