Yesterday was Victoria Day here in Canada. But instead of having the day off, I got called by someone who was scammed last week. Now she did report it to both the police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center, and the latter’s advice was to have her computer “cleaned.” So she phoned some friends and got my name from one of them. Now right off the top, I will say that she did the right thing by reporting this incident to the police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center as I suggested in this article. And that continued with the fact that she changed all her passwords to make sure that the scammers couldn’t do anything else. That too gets a thumbs up for me.
Upon arrival, I was presented with a Chromebook and a Samsung Galaxy phone. I have to admit that coming into this I was concerned that the scammers might have screwed up her computer by installing remote access software and who knows what else. But because she has a Chromebook, that’s not going to be a problem. Here’s why that’s the case by describing the scam:
- The victim was hit by a pop up scam while browsing the Internet. She could not close the window and there was a voice that was loud and annoying telling her that her computer would be “blocked” if she did not call the number in the pop up. So out of desperation, the victim called the number in the pop up.
- The scammer then tried to connect to connect to the Chromebook. I am guessing that they had no clue what to do at this point. So after trying to take it over by adding an Gmail account to it with admin rights and failing miserably at doing so, they pivoted to the Samsung Galaxy phone.
- Upon their urging, she installed AnyDesk along with Coinsmart on her Samsung phone. They then got her to log into her bank and then executed a refund scam. That’s a type of scam where the scammers convince you that they are going to refund you money by transferring it out of your bank account and then back into your bank account to solve some issue such as a “security issue” or a “mistake” of some sort. Except that the money never gets refunded. In this case, the scammers talked the victim into transferring an undisclosed amount of money from her bank account into Coinsmart which is an app that allows one to buy and sell Bitcoin. From there, it was transferred by the scammers into the scammer’s Bitcoin wallet.
Based on this, I knew that there was almost no chance that the scammers could have set up shop to come back into the Chromebook anytime they wanted as it would be difficult to do so as Chromebooks are resistant to that sort of thing. Though I did have a look at it and found nothing suspicious. And she had also deleted AnyDesk from the Samsung phone. So there’s no chance that the scammers could get into the phone again. Though I did have a look at the phone and found nothing interesting. Meaning something that would be a threat.
After spending 35 minutes, I declared that all was fine. Other the than the fact that the victim lost money, this could have been worse. Usually in these situations, I have to do a lot of work to get the computer back to a good state. Here’s an example of what that looks like. But that wasn’t the case here which is a good thing.
The last thing that I will mention is the amount of pressure that was put on this client. Even though she suspected that there was something wrong, the scammers applied a lot of pressure to keep the scam going. On top of that, the pop up also created a sense of urgency because of the threat that her computer would be “blocked”. The combination of both of these factors creates a situation where the victim wasn’t critically thinking about the situation. Which in turn means that the scam is easier to execute for the scammer. This illustrates the fact that scammers rely on pressure tactics to steal money from you. As I mentioned in this article, scammers will use a sense of urgency to execute their scam on top of relying on pressure tactics. Thus your job is to resist all of that.
Now this situation illustrates how crafty scammers are. In this case they were able to move from the Chromebook to the phone to execute the scam. Thus you need to make sure that you have your head on a swivel to make sure that you don’t fall victim to a scam. And hopefully, this helps to give you some extra awareness so that you don’t become the victim of a scam.
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This entry was posted on May 23, 2023 at 9:32 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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My Victoria Day Was Spent Helping A Woman Recover From A Pop Up Scam
Yesterday was Victoria Day here in Canada. But instead of having the day off, I got called by someone who was scammed last week. Now she did report it to both the police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center, and the latter’s advice was to have her computer “cleaned.” So she phoned some friends and got my name from one of them. Now right off the top, I will say that she did the right thing by reporting this incident to the police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center as I suggested in this article. And that continued with the fact that she changed all her passwords to make sure that the scammers couldn’t do anything else. That too gets a thumbs up for me.
Upon arrival, I was presented with a Chromebook and a Samsung Galaxy phone. I have to admit that coming into this I was concerned that the scammers might have screwed up her computer by installing remote access software and who knows what else. But because she has a Chromebook, that’s not going to be a problem. Here’s why that’s the case by describing the scam:
Based on this, I knew that there was almost no chance that the scammers could have set up shop to come back into the Chromebook anytime they wanted as it would be difficult to do so as Chromebooks are resistant to that sort of thing. Though I did have a look at it and found nothing suspicious. And she had also deleted AnyDesk from the Samsung phone. So there’s no chance that the scammers could get into the phone again. Though I did have a look at the phone and found nothing interesting. Meaning something that would be a threat.
After spending 35 minutes, I declared that all was fine. Other the than the fact that the victim lost money, this could have been worse. Usually in these situations, I have to do a lot of work to get the computer back to a good state. Here’s an example of what that looks like. But that wasn’t the case here which is a good thing.
The last thing that I will mention is the amount of pressure that was put on this client. Even though she suspected that there was something wrong, the scammers applied a lot of pressure to keep the scam going. On top of that, the pop up also created a sense of urgency because of the threat that her computer would be “blocked”. The combination of both of these factors creates a situation where the victim wasn’t critically thinking about the situation. Which in turn means that the scam is easier to execute for the scammer. This illustrates the fact that scammers rely on pressure tactics to steal money from you. As I mentioned in this article, scammers will use a sense of urgency to execute their scam on top of relying on pressure tactics. Thus your job is to resist all of that.
Now this situation illustrates how crafty scammers are. In this case they were able to move from the Chromebook to the phone to execute the scam. Thus you need to make sure that you have your head on a swivel to make sure that you don’t fall victim to a scam. And hopefully, this helps to give you some extra awareness so that you don’t become the victim of a scam.
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This entry was posted on May 23, 2023 at 9:32 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.