I wasn't going to write about this, but she told me it would be okay if I did, so I guess I will. I just won't say who she is.
Every Thursday morning one of our local radio stations has a Better Business Bureau guy on to do this Scam of the Week segment. This is where he talks about the latest scam to hit our area, and how people are being fooled.
Stuff like "Congratulations! You've won $235,245,233,344,344.87 in the Canadian Lottery that you didn't even enter! Just send $10,000 to our P.O. box and we'll give you your winnings! We promise!"
Or maybe "Pay us $15,000 and then we'll come back tomorrow and fix your storm-damaged roof! Really! We will!"
Whenever I listen to this guy I'm appalled that anyone would ever fall for this shit. I mean, what kind of a person would be so, so stupid?
I know this one person. A person who I never thought of as being particularly dumb. Until now. Now I'm rethinking some of my earlier opinions. This person fell for one of these scams.
The one that goes "Hi, this is PayPal. Please give us all of your personal information or some bad stuff will happen! Really, it will be terrible! The only thing that can save you is to click here and enter all of your information!"
So this person gets this e-mail, clicks the link, and happily enters all of her personal information. Bank account number. Debit card PIN. Social Security Number. Bra size. And more.
You might imagine what happened next.
Her bank account was cleaned out.
Now of course that's no laughing matter, but it looks like the bank will refund her money after all the red tape is cut through. She just has to prove that she was at Chuck-E-Cheeses last night, and not in Europe buying army surplus stuff.
And, as an added bonus above and beyond not having any money for a while and having to deal with the embarrassment of falling for this scam, she now gets to closely monitor her credit for the rest of her life, because she typed in her social security number!
Oh well, at least she's got a new hobby to enjoy.
