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I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

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Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#251
Some of the comments here are cruel and missing the entire point.

Well yes, as you're slowly reading this entire case, with the prior knowledge that he is getting scammed, and having all the time in the world to find the mistake or red flag in his actions, sure enough you'll find it. How very smart and vigilant you are.

But as the article already explains, those are not the conditions in which a scam happens. You don't know you're being scammed. The person sounds helpful, exploiting your inner desire to be cooperative. There's a sense of urgency, which disrupts calm and clear thinking. It was a very sophisticated and well prepared scam, which increases trust and makes you glance over or "forgive" small oddities.

Ironically, the fact that some of you chose to criticize somebody showing vulnerability is very emotional behavior, not rational behavior. Perfect candidates to be scammed.

By the way, are Americans still logging into online banking with a username and password? That's it? Please tell me that's a joke.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#252
post #69

I'm so skeptical of these "experts" especially if they write a blog post where they hate their bank. I've been with Wells for over a decade. They have never called me. Never. I have had "fraud" alerts hundreds of times. They always happen at certain POS, and it's always a text alert. Some of the stories I read make me viscerally react with "what in the world are you doing with something as simple as a bank account?"…

The author does seem to bang on about his "reasonable assumptions" for how much Wells and Apple Pay suck, so he should continue the call! Like he's just too clever to follow the advice he'd give everyone else to hang up and call back.

I didn't read it as explaining why she should continue the call, just why she did continue the call. She's explaining why those things didn't immediately trigger the scam alarm. Nowhere did I see her claim to be too clever to do anything.

I found it an interesting read which details an experience which is far removed from how you expect a scam call to occur. It's interesting to read the signs which should have been alarm bells, but which were dismissed because nobody is perfect all the time.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#253
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon today is a street side flea market. You really don't know what you'll get. I've started ordering more stuff from traditional retailers. Their online operations these days are really good, and at most a few dollars more than Amazon. Clothes from macys.com, home goods from homedepot.com and target.com, and so on. You're not flooded with choices with these stores that are mostly garbage, instead you get only 1-3…

I think ordering on amazon has become a little like getting your car towed. Towing companies appear to be a large shell game where your $200 tow is handled my one or more middlemen who eventually get some poor independent towtruck driver to tow you for $75 Amazon should do something that would allow partnering with decent brands. Customers would be happy, brands could keep their reputation, amazon could get a reasona…

> I think ordering on amazon has become a little like getting your car towed.

Apparently especially in Ontario…

https://www.thedrive.com/news/44749/inside-the-tow-truck-maf...

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#254
post #6

I nearly got taken by a scammer because Amazon transferred me to one. I purchased a set of Reolink cameras on Amazon, (they've been great) one of them failed a couple months in. I contacted Amazon customer support (via my Amazon login and in their interface) and they wanted to troubleshoot with their technical team. Eventually the (very helpful) Amazon technician suggested contacting Reolink for support and started a…

> I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer. I contacted Amazon again and let them know what had happened. Hopefully they will figure out how their guy got this scammers phone number and teach him how to find a 3rd party phone number... 1) Amazon is complicit in shady behavior on their platform, whether it's inventory commingling, sketchy sellers repurposing existing, well-reviewed listings for a to…

No post body was provided.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's easy to convince yourself you're way too smart to make this mistake. At the same time, you now deliberately skipped over the fact twice that he just skimmed the mail and didn't fully realize it was specifically a 2FA code, just assumed it was some verification code. I mean, the wording explicitly talks about entering this code somewhere to enable stuff. That's already two dead giveaways. Otherwise you'd be…

It's pretty obvious what is a 2FA code and what is not. If I'm being sent a code on my email or phone, I know not to tell it to someone on the phone. Indeed, even that very email she was sent contained a reminder not to tell it to someone on the phone. I read the entire article, I am just unimpressed by the justifications as to how this "could happen to anybody."

I don't think the e-mail in the article is very obviously a 2FA code? I usually associate 2FA with something I use to log in somewhere; not to do some other operation which (presumably) already requires account access. To me, it looks like a Wells Fargo Apple Pay "Verification Code", which honestly could mean anything.

There are other signs, obviously. You could ask the question of, why is the e-mail asking me to enter the code myself while the customer support rep asking me to provide it over the phone? But as you well know, the author also asked that question, and arrived at a plausible enough sounding answer.

Regarding that last sentence: I have actually skimmed the e-mail many times now, and only when looking at it again to try to understand what you meant by "even that very email contained a reminder not to tell it to someone on the phone" did I actually see that part. I suppose I just started reading the standard "if you have questions call us on this number" text and skipped the rest of the paragraph. Brains are very good at extracting what they think is the relevant information and ignoring what they think is the irrelevant information, especially when in an active social interaction with another person who expects something from you.

I think any technical person should be able to analyze a play-by-play description of the events and explain exactly how each mistake could've been avoided. But I think most technical people could've made similar mistakes if they were caught in a vulnerable state of mind. I think sharing these kinds of stories, where even people who "should" know better got scammed, is an important part of how we learn to recognize scams. I think the vitriol in places like this comment section plays a part in making people avoid sharing stories like this.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#256
post #86
post #6

I nearly got taken by a scammer because Amazon transferred me to one. I purchased a set of Reolink cameras on Amazon, (they've been great) one of them failed a couple months in. I contacted Amazon customer support (via my Amazon login and in their interface) and they wanted to troubleshoot with their technical team. Eventually the (very helpful) Amazon technician suggested contacting Reolink for support and started a…

I'm blown away that Amazon has phone support! I had no idea!

They don't make it as easy to call as they did in the past though.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon today is a street side flea market. You really don't know what you'll get. I've started ordering more stuff from traditional retailers. Their online operations these days are really good, and at most a few dollars more than Amazon. Clothes from macys.com, home goods from homedepot.com and target.com, and so on. You're not flooded with choices with these stores that are mostly garbage, instead you get only 1-3…

This seems to be the classic underdog problem. The traditional retailers that you like today will become third party marketplaces tomorrow if they grow. So the issue is that we only get good service from underdogs and it is destined to fail once the underdog is not an underdog anymore.

Except Amazon started as a third-party marketplace. This isn't *new*, some of us just have really short memories. For the first several years the only first-party sales they did were in books (and not all books on the store even at the beginning). They've expanded into other first-party categories, but there are much fewer first-party categories than people assume. (And always have been.)

The big thing that changed isn't the third-party marketplace on Amazon, it's that they increasingly and intentionally blurred the lines between "third-party" and "second-party" marketplaces. Any third-party that uses "Fulfilled by Amazon" logistics (warehouses, shipping) just about gets automatically upgraded in the Amazon user experience to "second-party" even if Amazon has no deeper working relationship with the third-party than "Fulfilled by Amazon".

Some of that intentional blurring of the lines is also questionably Dark Patterns intentionally designed to confuse consumers in just exactly what categories Amazon supports directly (first-party) and which ones are third-party, and more importantly which ones are first-party usually versus third-party today (such as sold out goods). They want to give consumers the illusion of an "everything store" that is never out of stock. That's never the practical reality, and the illusion may be evil from the perspective of shadily pushing consumers to unvetted third parties due to Dark Patterns that back that illusion.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#258
It gets even weirder when your bank acts like a scammer. A few weeks ago I was trying to help my wife add her USBank credit card to Apple Pay and Apple Pay said I needed to call this number to finish setting up the card. So I call the number and the guy is very friendly and asks me for a bunch of identity verification details, which I provide to him, but then he asks us to send a code back that will be coming over text messaging - yes, I initiated the phone call, but I suddenly realize that the number Apple directed me to was not the same number on my USBank card. Being a bit paranoid I tell the guy “Look, nothing personal but I get nervous when people ask for a verification code to be read back to them, I’m just going to call the regular number and go from there, okay?” Instead of being friendly, this guy suddenly gets in my face and is like “Oh, you’ll give me all this other info but won’t read that code back to me? I’m Fraud Prevention dude, good luck getting this done calling the main number. Oh, and just for this I’m putting a block on your card.” I hung up immediately and called US Bank’s main number and asked to talk to a supervisor - sure as hell, it turns out the guy I had talked to did work in their fraud prevention department and actually had retaliated against me by locking my credit card. It was the most incredibly ugly thing I’ve ever seen from a customer service department.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice, despite it being a pain sometimes! I once got a voicemail from the fraud department at my bank, with a number to call back. I googled the number and all that came up were stories about being scammed. So I was 95% sure it was a scam, but called my bank directly just in case. The person who answered assured me they hadn't contacted me, and it was indeed a scam. I later got a follow-up voicemail fro…

I had something similar. One time I got a phone call from a "Scam Likely" and decided to answer it. And it was an automated message from my bank asking if some purchases in another state were real or fraudulent. At this point I began to second guess if it was a scam or not, but had to assume it still was. I ended up logging into my account and seeing the same fraudulent purchases that it listed over the phone. So I c…

Probably because the phone number is calling about a scam (fradulant charge), and then when they hang up, people report the phone number as a scam because they don't understand the difference.

Re: I'm a scam prevention expert and I got scammed

#260
post #191

Here is an interesting story in which a scammer almost got me but failed because he knew me "too well": One morning in college I was awakened by a call after staying up all night working on some project. The caller claimed to be from my home country's embassy and was investigating a fraud case I was involved in. He started by confirming my personal information such as DOB and passport number and he had them all corre…

Crazy, was it someone you knew?

No, not to my knowledge. It seems that they obtained/built my pre-college profile many years ago, but they attempted scam until later and failed to match it up-to-date
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