Quote:
Originally Posted by TRFrance
It still amazes me that people get taken in by stuff like that.
Internet 101, rule 1 is: NEVER give anyone your password. Period.
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You know some of them are incredibly tricky and I DO understand how some people, especially the elderly get taken right in.
My father passed away about two years ago, and had been in banking and law.
About a year AFTER he died, I received an email informing me that my father (And they had his NAME, Date of Death, BIRTHPLACE!!!! AND BIRTHDAY!!)
Had several bank accounts and investment portfolios that this "Investment Firm" had been managing for him. Of course they totalled several million in value. Not only did they have HIS name and vital statistics but they had MY name as well as the names of my two brothers and my mother and were "Informing me of the investments and wanted to make arrangements to have them transferred to his estate and his rightful heirs."
You know for a moment I totally bought it! It had been his way to completely leave everyone out of the loop as to his business dealings, and so something like this was no surprise at all!
It wasn't until I read on about the shares in the Diamond Mining firm IN NIGERIA that the bells and sirens finally went off in my brain.
But can you imagaine if I was a seventy eight year old widow who had been as many women are completely uniformed of their husbands investments and business dealings, I can see sending them every bit of information they asked for thinking that I had kind of stumbled over a pot of gold!
Anyway, now I notice the scams are moving into Hong Kong and India, not just Nigeria.
I still get the general scams like the Paypal thing or the Ebay thing or the Citibank thing, but the scam I mentioned above was Particualrly deceptive. It was only upon a little reflection that it became clear that someone is reading the obituaries (He had died in Palm Beach, Florida a particularly affluent town, so I guess that is why they were watching the obits.) But it had everything, Birthplace, age, date of death, survivors and their names as well as their cities of residence, so somehow they got my email and put it all together in a MOST accurate and yet deceptive way.
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