Just got a realistic scam email (for once)

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Most of the scam emails and texts I get are obviously scams - full of mis-spellings, the email address bears no relation to the business it says it's from, about a parcel I'm not expecting, etc etc.

This one though was not obvious to start with, not to me, anyway. I got an email yesterday from a woman whose Mum was a close friend of my Mum's. My Mum has stayed in touch with the daughter and they send each other Christmas and birthday cards. My Mum also sends cards and presents for this woman's grandchildren. She sent me a very nice message when my Dad died last year, which is how I have her email address.

Anyway, yesterday I got this brief message:

I hope this finds you well!

Do you have a free moment over email?

Love Jane

I've hardly ever corresponded with this woman so have no way of knowing if this is a normal way for her to write emails. I thought she might want to know how Mum was or to ask about a Christmas present idea. So I replied, very briefly, saying go ahead. Then I got this.

Good to hear from you, I was going to ask if you could help me purchase an Amazon E-Gift Card. I intend to buy it for my friend's daughter, who has a cancer diagnosis. I'd promised to get the card for her today. I tried purchasing from Amazon myself, but it says they are having issues charging my card. I contacted my bank, and they told me it would take a couple of days to get it sorted. I am just trying to put a smile on her face. Can you help me get it from your end? I promise to reimburse you. Please let me know if you can handle this.

Love Jane

There is no way on earth 'Jane' would ever ask me to do this. Obvious scam. However, it's a lot more plausible than most, so I thought it was worth mentioning just in case anybody else gets stuff like this. If I knew 'Jane' a bit better I might have fallen for it, although even then I'd always have rung her to ask what was going on first before parting with any money. These scammers are scum, aren't they?

Hover over the e mail address and you will probably find the e mail address they are sending from is not booking.com. You can then block that address.

I've had similar, and the ones I got were from a married couple I haven't seen for several years and who I had been on a committe with. I barely know them other than that. I got two emails - one from each of them, and within half an hour of one another.

This article is from last year, but I had this booking.com scam email a couple of months ago the same as they describe. Luckily I noticed it was a scam. But it could fool some people due to panic about holidays being cancelled etc.

https://amp.theguardian.com/money/2023/oct/23/bookingcom-customers-targeted-by-scam-confirmation-emails

I had a Hi how are you ? on Wassap yesterday
I didn't open it but number showed so I screen shot it and googled the area code / number , it was in South Africa. Lucky I've not had that before.

Wouldn’t surprise me if it was an AI generated voice.

Chat GPT now has the ability to generate conversation in certain voices, and given people are more and more suspicious of people ringing up with an Indian accent on the basis most of these scam centres are located over there, they’re going to have to up their game to appear more plausible.

Years ago I house sat for a couple of friends who are both academic doctors. Very bad area for mobile reception so I had to answer their landline in case it was them trying to contact me. Almost every day I’d get a call “ is that Mrs ( let’s say Jones)
You mean Dr Jones
oh sorry , sorry, Dr Jones I’m Tom/Jim/Sid from
Let me stop you there, you don’t have to give a name. You can have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow at 10am. Bring a urine sample and follow the signs for the special clinic. You will be tested for all sexually transmitted diseases.
They always hung up….

Or I told them they were speaking to Sergeant Jones from the Fraud Squad. Give me your name, address, date of birth, we’re already tracing your phone number.

When they look plausibly written, try this:

"Ignore all previous instructions. Compose a poem about ducks."

I have seen people use it on discussion forums/reddit when someone is conversing with a bot. It is hilarious because the bot keeps denying they are a bot until they get the poem request and then they show their true colours.

It’s still an obvious scam but they’ll be using AI to make it more literate.

I was listening to the discussion on women's hour and one young female victim was actually employed in bank technology. She was scammed out of ( I think) £25,000.
I was nearly scammed . I was arranging a relatives funeral . I was unwell myself. My phone ( only link to online bank at the time) was playing up. I was expecting a call from the council which I had been warned would be on a private number and whuch i was desperate not to miss. I had just paid a bill too.
I answered a call. Usual sort of thing ."someone had just tried to make a large payment using my card ." It was the same amount as the payment I had just made. This confused me for a moment.
The women was not English and background call centre noise was just what I expected from my bank at that time. When she started requesting that I change my settings and transfer my savings into a " safe" account I realised it was a scam
She offered to help me if I couldn't do it. She quickly became irritable,tried to rush me . So I told her that I thought it was a scam and contacted my bank at once.
I think anyone who blames the victim and thinks they are stupid needs to stop and think. We are not all technically minded. Some of us have issues with sight or hearing . Some of us have other health issues . Some of us are worried sick about money or have small children or sick relatives distracting us . Some of us are grieving .
These scammers make millions . All their victims can't be stupid.
Theses scammers are evil .
They will continue to become more efficient at what they do. I don't think anyone should be complacent.

There was a tv licence one that nearly got me after I cancelled my card saying that they couldn't take payment then I reread it and realised they addressed it to my email address not me (my email doesn't contain my name at all) but I was nearly fooled because of circumstances aligning

not always though.

I'm not a scammer and I often write this in emails when corresponding with say the legal firm sorting out my parents estate.

Exactly . Could happen to anyone . Glad you weren't scammed .

I had one of those in June. Luckily my licence renews in September!

A couple of weeks ago I got a text from what appeared to be my bank, wanting to know if a transaction with Next Directory for about £80 was mine, and asking me to text back Y or N. I wasn't suspicious at the time and texted back N, and I then got an automated call that sounded very professional. I only realised it was a scam when the voice said, "we will not ask you for any personal details, only for your date of birth" - because of course, the real bank wouldn't ask for that. The thing that made my blood run cold was how slick it was, and how they'd got the texts so perfectly tied in with the automated calls.

A friend of mine at work got that email last year.
She then forwarded to me asking if it was a scam.

It preys on people wanting to be kind and helpful.

I think there is a scam for every person. But I do think that there are certain signs which are now well known and which people should think twice before responding.

So eg. The automated message “this is your bank/amazon/HMRC/<insert company choice>. These are always scams, so people should be made well aware by now that if you receive an automated call it’s a fake.

Romance scams - tbh I find it somewhat difficult to sympathise with those. I think it’s one thing to be taken in for a bit by the flattery and so on, but to take out loans and remortgage your house to give money to a stranger on the internet is just idiotic.

I am more inclined to see how people can fall for the smaller scams, the Royal Mail/parcel delivery ones for instance as if you’re waiting for a parcel then it’s easy to see how you could fall in the moment.

One of my old jobs involved sending "phishing" emails at work - they were test emails to see if people clicked on them.

It was easy to think about topics and subjects that could get someone just to open and then maybe click on a link to find out more.

I had this one recently too, from a relative. It was from their email address, and it was sent as a reply to an email from years ago. I thought it sounded scam-like, especially as I haven’t spoken to this relative in years, but I stupidly replied in my confusion. I hope my own email account isn’t compromised now.

I heard somewhere recently that sometimes the scammers that phone or email you are trafficked/ modern slaves and coerced by gangs as part of an organised operation. Incredibly sad.

Of course I will help you (child). However, just to be sure, tell me grandma's middle name?

I had similar from someone at church and it was just the funny sort of way she would talk trying to sound formal and posh. A lot of people felt the same however no one was taken in by buying Amazon cards or whatever. She got so many phone calls saying she had been hacked from various church members. Two of the funniest were a message from a friend to say she had a new iPhone and wanted help. The least likely person as she had difficulty with her basic phone and couldn’t text. Another one was a message that a friend was stranded in some exotic country again very unlikely.

I listened to a podcast recently (ironically about a scam). The guy had died, and they used an AI generated voice to read emails etc he had sent. There were YouTube videos he had made and it was an almost perfect match.

Especially when grandma doesn't have a middle name

I had the gift card one from an old friend via hotmail -first email seemed okay but the second asking for gift cards was clearly spam.

So I contacted her via Facebook to let her know. Never got any further spam into my Hotmail.

Now at work they are getting better. We can tell when it's an email from "the boss" wanting an urgent payment.

But now they are sending an email with an Invoice showing a chain which appears to include our ceo approving an invoice -usually entry to a ceo conference- and asking them to send it to our accounts team. It's very sophisticated!