Tis the Season for Scamming

[Cudedog]

Just got another scam email this morning. Another new and creative one I had not seen before.

"Here's your free membership as a FedEx [insert name of your choice here, my email said FedEx Delivery Management Member". Although I didn't open the email, I am pretty sure there will be a link within the email with a statement something like "To see your benefits - and FREE shipping! - click here".

As we all know, clicking on such links tends to download malware onto our computers. I just deleted it without opening it, and then emptied my trash.

I would be interested in knowing what other kinds of spam email/texts/phone calls you all may have been getting during this "joyous holiday season".

Thanks.

Anne

[JudyJB]

Mostly I have been getting advertisements from places I purchased things online, like Macys, Kohls, various campgrounds, Camping World, Dicks Sporting Goods, among others. The irritating thing is that they are easy to unsubscribe to, but there is always a notice that it may take 10+ days to take effect, which is ridiculous in this age when they could easily have that unsubscribe button directly link to the address database. In the meantime, I get at least one email per day from some of them. And of course, if I buy anything else from them, they will add me to their list again.

Also, some of the unsubscribe pages are tricky because you might unsubscribe to a marketing list for men's clothing, you may still be "subscribed" to a list for women's clothing.

A couple of weeks ago, I did get several emails that said I won prizes or free things. Since they came from an unknown place, I did not open them and deleted them based on the subject line. Haven't received any of those recently, luckily.

I was getting a lot of political phone calls before the election until I realized most of them thought I still lived in Michigan, so was probably still on the registered voters list even though it has been over ten years and I no longer have a Michigan drivers license. I called the clerk for the township I used to live in, and he removed my name from the voters rolls, so that helped.

One interesting thing is that my legal name is "Judy," not "Judith," but when I was baptized decades ago, my dad somehow put Judith on my baptismal certificate. Way back when I got my first drivers license, they accepted my baptismal certificate instead of my birth certificate. I fixed it to Judy in about 1990, but it took almost 30 years to stop getting mail addressed to "Judith" so I know that the state had sold my name decades ago and marketers were still using it!!! Amazing.

[snowball]

hmmm I think I got one of the Fedx e-mails... saw it wondered about it decided to ponder it a bit and it's still there... need to try and delete it tomorrow
I was going to ask about it tonight until I saw your post thank you Anne for answering my unasked question
sheila

[Cudedog]

hmmm I think I got one of the Fedx e-mails... saw it wondered about it decided to ponder it a bit and it's still there... need to try and delete it tomorrow
I was going to ask about it tonight until I saw your post thank you Anne for answering my unasked question
sheila

You are welcome, Sheila.

I think about you often, and enjoy your posts, thank you. I hope your weather is not being too hard on you.

Anne

[Colliemom]

There is one going around that is affecting Chat Messenger. Like phishing phone numbers, they phish a name from one of your friends you chat with on Messenger. Then they start out with Hello , Merry Christmas to you and your family. And inquire as to how you are doing and then proceed to get into the spiel about hey have you heard about the really good money deal from IFC. They tell you that the IFC is giving away free money that is part of a Covid relief deal. The IFC does exist by the way and they have a fraud alert message on their website for their name being used in scams. What they want you to do is click on this link that takes you to a picture of a FedEx building. And then they want you to click on the picture of the FedEx building and bring up the application so that you can apply for a free grant for as much as $50,000 or more and they will have it to you by FedEx within 24 hours. Yeah right. They use a picture of a lady who supposedly is an attorney. And if you look up her page on Facebook it is on there but it has like maybe three likes. Definitely a False page. I did a little research that’s how I know what was going on. I had a little fun with the scammer because it came through from one of my friends supposedly and I was very suspicious about it to begin with. I absolutely refused to open up any of their so-called links to anything and I was asking them some questions about what they were going to do for Christmas and a bunch of other things and they did not reply back to those questions, just kept just kept saying open up the link so we can help you with it. I even sent them a link to get into the song The PeaceCarol, so I’m sure they were getting frustrated because I wasn’t doing what they wanted and I finally said well it’s time to go to bed, see you later. I have never heard back from them since

In case you are wondering who the IFC is, this is who They are. Definitely a legitimate company.

International Finance Corporation: http://www.ifc.org
IFC is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in developing countries. Member of the World Bank Group.

[Cudedog]

Wow. Thanks, Sue. That scam is a new one for me. Most scams are pretty much "click on this link" or "phone this number".

Some of these scam attempts are so real it is pretty easy to fall for them, even for those of us "in the know".

Be careful, everyone.

Anne

[Bethers]

Oh, Sue I'm laughing out loud of you playing with the scammers, safely. What fun!

[Colliemom]

Beth, the scammer popped up again last night and this time I blocked it and reported it to Facebook. I got an email from Facebook thanking me for that and they are going to investigate it and they are also going to notify my friend as to what is going on.

[Bethers]

Beth, the scammer popped up again last night and this time I blocked it and reported it to Facebook. I got an email from Facebook thanking me for that and they are going to investigate it and they are also going to notify my friend as to what is going on.

That's what I do with the clones and scammers. FB handles it well when reported.

[Redetotry]

I had an email today that looked like it was from AT&T wanting me to check my phone battery. The 'reply to' on the message was Asurion. There was a start here place to click, I ignored it. I googled the question does AT&T send message about checking your phones battery life and saw the question hadn't been asked recently. It prior yeas most said they ignored the message but no real information. It said the process took about 15 minutes.