Posted on 12/16/2023 5:47:12 PM PST by george76
A woman has told how she lost her life savings after she fell for a sophisticated text scam.
When Suni Wan received a message from her bank HSBC saying that there was some fraudulent activity on her account she called them straight back.
The text did not seem unusual as it appeared in the same thread that her bank usually messaged her in.
The message told her that a new device had logged onto her account and if it wasn’t her to call back immediately.
The man on the other end of the phone said that an S8 had logged onto her account, which worried Suni as she had previously owned an S8, which is a Samsung phone.
Concerned that someone had got hold of her old phone and was using it to try and get into her bank account, Suni rattled off all the information the “bank” asked her, including her name, address and date of birth.
They also asked her to generate a one time pass code and read it out so they could fix the issue.
“Then he said there’s been some unusual activities and he put me on hold for quite a while..
Suni only grew suspicious when the man on the line started asking questions about her cryptocurrency account Coinspot.
...
Suni rang HSBC immediately and asked them to freeze her account but the scammers had already taken $49,000.
...
“The industry has seen an increase in fraudsters using ‘text spoofing’ to deliberately falsify the telephone number to appear as a genuine bank text message.”
“Scam text messages can even appear in the same message chain as real messages from the organisation, making them even harder to spot.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
But, but, but.... two factor authentication.
Old article from the year 202.
New York Post ^ | Dec. 14, 202
I’d love to see phone/text scammers executed.
Or call the 1800 number on it’s actual official page and not the number in the email.
That’s a pretty scary one because her threads matched up and she had recently had an S8. She was primed by those two things.
202. Did they even have text messaging back then? 😏
Yep. They’re getting more sophisticated with their schemes for sure.
Well, that’s what happens when you deal with a dope bank. Started as one, still handles cartel money. Comey was even associated with it.
We used to pay by cash and checks. And the world was fine.
Then bank and the government pushed electronic banking on us, without being able to make it secure. And when it fails, we pay the price.
Fraud was rampant with checks!
I don’t know, I’m pretty sure you could scroll though.
By the way, this phone scam was really elaborate.
Yes but camera phones were still primitive then.
No business or financial transactions are done by phone, text or otherwise.
Cash and checks were all subject to counterfeiting. The world was not "fine".
That *is* quite old!
Yep, not even one megapixel back then. And phones were on dial-up.
Of course, that's why they won't bother.
Two words - Zero Trust.
Poor baby, I feel so bad for her. These scammers are constantly sending me phishing emails. As much as I want to scam them, it’s not worth taking the chance. I automatically delete the emails and move along. It’s also the reason I got rid of my cell phone. I hardly ever used it anyway.
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