Karin's Adventures

Ever since email became mainstream crooks and thieves used it to try and phish personal details and passwords off unsuspecting honest people. These fraudulent emails are easy to recognize: they tell you some very exiting story about lottery winnings, or a huge amount of money somewhere, or it looks like a job offer - and then they ask for sensitive information, like your full name, birth date, address, home phone number, account number, SSN, ........ if you actually fall for that, and give up your data, you're toast!

Over the years people got wise, though. I don't think anybody in their right mind replies to scam emails anymore. So the criminals had to come up with different ideas. Lately they've been doing it with mobile phones.  

So, just in case you are young/innocent enough to still believe anything somebody will tell you, beware! Here's what happenend to me twice in the past few days:

You receive a call on your cell phone, the caller id shows just a number (sometimes it doesn't even look like a phone number). When you answer, a female computerized voice comes on saying something like 'Hello, this is ........... (insert the name of your bank here). Your account (or credit card, or debit card) has been temporarily suspended. To reactivate, please press 1 now to be transferred directly to our security department.' 

If you are curious enough to proceed to press 1, you will really be transferred. Just not to any bank's security department! The person will ask for many very personal details, and then abuse that information immediately to drain your bank account, or even overdraw it, if you were naive enough to opt-in for the 'overdraft protection' that your bank has been trying hard to push onto you recently (so they can charge you $25 per incident).