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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

#271

Post by mypalmike »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #139
rolobio wrote: 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…

It's really hard recognizing the image Amazon have in the US compared to my personal experience with amazon.de . The service is stellar, shipping both ways is free as long as you buy products covered by prime. Refunds are with no questions asked (as long as you don't start abusing it i guess). As soon as you go into 3rd party sellers the experience gets muddled, though I've had plenty of good experiences with those a…

I think it's selection bias. People with a bad experience with Amazon are more likely to dive into it here. And dive they do, nearly any time Amazon is mentioned. Even in a thread about Wells Fargo we somehow get sidetracked into "Amazon just sells counterfeit garbage".

Out of the thousands of items I've bought through Amazon, I think maybe one set of Henckels steak knives might be counterfeit (I've ordered two sets of the same knives and they were noticeably different - both seem high quality though).

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

#272

Post by brimble »

aceazzameen wrote: post #178
carabiner wrote: post #108

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…

Yep. I've been ordering from Target, Best Buy, and Walmart much more often these days. I just assume the product descriptions and reviews on Amazon are all lies.

Target and Wal-Mart also sell third party shit. It's easier for me to just buy directly from brands I like, or to shop for them on a couple outlet sites I trust (so far) to sell legit (overstocked or lightly damaged) top-quality stuff and not lower-quality second- or third-tier versions (as some outlet stores do), than figure out how to avoid or disable displaying third party sellers on a bunch of different sites.

By the time you factor in the time and frustration for that, any savings (which isn't even guaranteed) doesn't look like great ROI anyway. Plus, even Amazon often won't carry the full range of a brand's products, so I get more options shopping this way.

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

#273

Post by ashtonkem »

rolobio wrote: 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…

Given how many fake products amazon sells and intermingles with legitimate products, it isn’t at all surprising that they forwarded you to a scammer. They just don’t care about protecting their customers, apparently.

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

#274

Post by ashtonkem »

taylorfinley wrote: post #94
Nextgrid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It’s pretty shocking but most IP cameras can be accessed with nothing more than their serial number. Here’s a somewhat recent DefCon talk about it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_gKEF76oMM I use Reolink cameras, in the admin interface there’s an option called UID. Turning that off (theoretically) disables the backdoor. I have my cameras and NVR (which is actually just a python script on an old laptop that uses ffmpe…

And this is why my reolink cameras are on a subnet without access to the internet. The only thing it can reach is my home assistant and open source NVR.

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

#275

Post by fallingknife »

caf wrote: post #211
tempestn wrote: post #151

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…

This has a similarity to the original story here, in that the original sounded like: "They behaved a lot like a scammer would, but I also totally expect my real bank to behave like a scammer would" .

He is looking for a definite red flag that it's a scammer. This is a terrible strategy and he should know better. One suspicious act and you should hang up and call the number on the back of the card. Really you should just not take calls from the bank ever and call back on the number on the card.

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

#276

Post by mort96 »

renewiltord wrote: post #140
googlryas wrote: post #118

> So, I faithfully relayed the Apple Pay verification code, as requested. I cannot fathom how a tech professional would do this. I mean, I read their justification, but it still doesn't make an ounce of sense to me, other than their brain was shut off for the entire call.

I think I can kind of get it. This guy has made his own life so complicated that he no longer knows what a normal guy operates like. A normal person knows that scam calls come in all the time, so they're on the alert for them. A normal person has their MFA device or has MFA on text and they know these two mechanisms have codes they should never relay. If they got an MFA via email they'd immediately have their suspici…

> A normal person has their MFA device or has MFA on text and they know these two mechanisms have codes they should never relay. If they got an MFA via email they'd immediately have their suspicions up.

What? I get MFA codes on e-mail all the time. I've got them from Steam, from Mojang, from GitHub, from Square Enix, from Digital Ocean, etc. For a normal person, getting some code you have to relay to some other entity via e-mail is normal.

Not to mention that the e-mail was actually a legit 2FA e-mail from Wells Fargo? That's how this scam works after all; you tell the victim that they'll receive a message with a code, then the scammer tries to do some action which requires 2FA, then the victim reads the code from the 2FA message. The fact that you would categorize this e-mail as an obviously fake e-mail which normal people would immediately recognize as suspicious, when it's actually a real 2FA e-mail, is pretty telling I think.

> A normal person, through the normalcy of their system, assumes that if this bank is having trouble dealing with them they'd have trouble dealing with everyone and that's just absurd.

No, this is absurd. Everyone has experienced having some one-off problem with some account in some system. Not to mention that the case in TFA was explicitly about fraud prevention calling you about suspected fraudulent charges, which seems extremely normal to me. Limiting individual accounts due to suspected fraud, and then notifying the owner of that account, is exactly the purpose of fraud prevention.

The only part of this event which the author's unusual set-up is responsible for, is that she gave an unusual level of credibility to the scammer just for calling her phone number.

But if it comforts you to think normal people would be immune to this scam just because normal people have their information more readily available on the internet, keep believing that I guess.

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

#277

Post by fallingknife »

paxys wrote: post #71

I expected some crazy new attack vector that was so sophisticated it could fool this Scam Prevention Expert, but this post is laughable. They fell for textbook "scamming 101" that my grandma knows to avoid. Here's one tip for this expert – if you get a 2FA code over text or email that clearly has the line "we will never contact you for this code over phone or text" right under it, DON'T give it to a "support agent" o…

Amazing that a security "professional" would wait until he is 100% sure it's a scam and not hang up when he isn't 100% sure it's legit.

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

#278

Post by gotaquestion »

nopeYouAreWrong wrote: post #22

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?"…

I think it was important of the author to put that out there, expert or not. It made me take a mental inventory, and bolster my first-responder thoughts.

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

#279

Post by TrianguloY »

"I was tired"

This says it all. You may be the best expert and everything you want, but when you are tired you are no longer an expert, and it's something that practically can't be learnt to self-identify.

If you think that X will never happen to you, wait until you are tired and we'll see about that.

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

#280

Post by brimble »

jameshart wrote: post #160
Phiwise_ wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even already knowing about this I'm still mystified that landlines work this way on every occasion that I'm reminded of it. Does anyone know if there is, or at least was, a justification for this mode of operation? Was it at least of any use to anyone back around the 1900s or whenever or is it just another "we do it because that's how we've been doing it" residue that hasn't been cleaned yet?

Back in the day, folks would have more than one phone in their house. Someone would call and all the phones would ring (or you might turn off the ringers on some of them so only one main phone actually rings). So someone might pick up the phone in the entrance hall and the caller would ask to speak to Becky, and Becky’s mom would yell up the stairs ‘BECKY PHONE’ and then put the receiver back down while Becky runs in…

I lived through this era and at one point worked at a phone company and never knew about this behavior. I'd hold the receiver until I heard the other person pick up, then hang up.
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