I can already tell scams are getting more sophisticated. I work for a well known company whose confidential info or assets would be very appealing to leakers or whatever scammers do. One day, I get a text from an unknown number claiming to be my company’s CEO and addressing me by my first name and saying they need my help. I’m not exec level, but the CEO does actually know me by name and works with my department fairly closely compared to others, but not so closely I have their cell number pre-programmed into my contacts. I go immediately into panic work mode and almost respond back - after all, you can’t ignore a CEO for more than a minute right? I have my text response typed out, but then something in my brain is like “wait, my CEO would almost certainly go through my department head first. They’ve never given me a work task directly.” So I try to find their cell number to verify it, but I can’t. It’s plausible they’d have my number, because they distributed the entire company’s cell phone numbers during the beginning of the pandemic. Makes sense they wouldn’t list the CEO though, don’t want just anyone calling. I decided to email their assistant to verify if it’s them but as I started writing the email, the more I convinced myself it was a scam. So I deleted my email, but briefly considered texting my boss about the situation just in case, but my boss has a tendency to blow minor things out of proportion and panic easily, so ultimately I just completely ignored the text and didn’t tell anyone about it. And I never got reprimanded for ignoring the CEO, so now I’m sure I was right it was a scam. But then I spent the next hour trying to figure out how a scammer had my name, my cell, and my employer. I’m not so naive to think that someone couldn’t find my Linkedin profile and google the CEO, but I’ve never put my cell number online, so how did the scammers connect me with my number? Then it dawned on me - the week before, I changed my cell phone’s caller ID to show my full name, as my number had another person’s name coded in, and co-workers during the pandemic WFH would ignore my [sometimes urgent] calls because they didn’t know it was me. So now I’m assuming the phone company publishes caller ID changes, or that it is publicly accessible - that I didn’t realize when I did it! I’m assuming the scammers were trolling the caller ID updates, but it’s still a lot of work to determine who among those updates is worthy to scam, isn’t it? Do they have a bot who does this and flags people who work for well known corporations? Would they have texted me anyway if I was working for Joe Schmo plumbing in a small town? Maybe they would have but they by chance got extra lucky with me. I googled this scam and while I found a general category it falls under, no results for the exact text message text, so it maybe was customized to me? It was in perfect English and grammar, contrary to most scams. So that’s the only time I almost ever fell for a scam. They are getting good when they want to be.
And perhaps all this text and story is enough info to scam me later after something scrapes this comment? Human compulsion for shared storytelling making me risk it.
I can already tell scams are getting more sophisticated. I work for a well known company whose confidential info or assets would be very appealing to leakers or whatever scammers do. One day, I get a text from an unknown number claiming to be my company’s CEO and addressing me by my first name and saying they need my help. I’m not exec level, but the CEO does actually know me by name and works with my department fairly closely compared to others, but not so closely I have their cell number pre-programmed into my contacts. I go immediately into panic work mode and almost respond back - after all, you can’t ignore a CEO for more than a minute right? I have my text response typed out, but then something in my brain is like “wait, my CEO would almost certainly go through my department head first. They’ve never given me a work task directly.” So I try to find their cell number to verify it, but I can’t. It’s plausible they’d have my number, because they distributed the entire company’s cell phone numbers during the beginning of the pandemic. Makes sense they wouldn’t list the CEO though, don’t want just anyone calling. I decided to email their assistant to verify if it’s them but as I started writing the email, the more I convinced myself it was a scam. So I deleted my email, but briefly considered texting my boss about the situation just in case, but my boss has a tendency to blow minor things out of proportion and panic easily, so ultimately I just completely ignored the text and didn’t tell anyone about it. And I never got reprimanded for ignoring the CEO, so now I’m sure I was right it was a scam. But then I spent the next hour trying to figure out how a scammer had my name, my cell, and my employer. I’m not so naive to think that someone couldn’t find my Linkedin profile and google the CEO, but I’ve never put my cell number online, so how did the scammers connect me with my number? Then it dawned on me - the week before, I changed my cell phone’s caller ID to show my full name, as my number had another person’s name coded in, and co-workers during the pandemic WFH would ignore my [sometimes urgent] calls because they didn’t know it was me. So now I’m assuming the phone company publishes caller ID changes, or that it is publicly accessible - that I didn’t realize when I did it! I’m assuming the scammers were trolling the caller ID updates, but it’s still a lot of work to determine who among those updates is worthy to scam, isn’t it? Do they have a bot who does this and flags people who work for well known corporations? Would they have texted me anyway if I was working for Joe Schmo plumbing in a small town? Maybe they would have but they by chance got extra lucky with me. I googled this scam and while I found a general category it falls under, no results for the exact text message text, so it maybe was customized to me? It was in perfect English and grammar, contrary to most scams. So that’s the only time I almost ever fell for a scam. They are getting good when they want to be.
And perhaps all this text and story is enough info to scam me later after something scrapes this comment? Human compulsion for shared storytelling making me risk it.