One of the themes of this blog has been Social Engineering. I never set out to make that a primary subject but circumstances have drawn my posts in that direction. Today, I’m going to relate a story of how one of my customers got the “double whammy.”
First, in case you missed my other posts on Social Engineering, here are the links:
Now, the double whammy story. Last year, one of my customers – a intelligent man, I might add – fell for one of those pop-up scams. The message which appeared told him his computer was infected, his IP address was exposed to the whole world and his financial information might be at risk. In a panic, my customer called the toll-free number and eventually allowed the caller onto his computer. After showing my customer all kinds of data and labeling it as “hacking,” the person on the phone said he could clean up the problems if his service was purchased. Plus, once it was cleaned up, the company would keep my customer’s computer running well. All he had to pay was $1,000. (One year of our Remote Technical Support is $134.95.) The person on the phone was a smoother talker who instilled pure terror in my customer’s mind so the purchase was made – $1,000. The guy on the phone added some junk programs onto the computer, declared it “fixed” and got off the machine. My customer never heard from them again regarding maintenance of his computer. That was whammy #1.
After a year of not hearing from them, they finally called just last week. The person calling my customer told him that the company he dealt with was going out of business and they wanted to refund his $1,000. How great is that? My customer was finally going to get his money back after a year! The guy on the phone told him all he had to do was let him back on his computer and then everything would be taken care of – and the $1,000 would be deposited into my customer’s account. My customer complied and was happily looking forward to getting his $1,000 back. The next day, he and his wife went to the bank to get some cash out of their account. They were told that their account had a zero balance. And that was whammy #2.
Again, I want to reiterate that my customer is an intelligent man. Social Engineering can happen to anyone! Two of the three methods of SE that I’ve mentioned in other posts were used on my customer. In the first case, a year ago, they used fear as a motivator. Last week, they used an attempt to tap into dreams. (Getting $1,000 back.)
As I often say, the Internet is great; Social Media is, too. But, you always have to be on your guard against those crooks who would take something good and create evil and steal your money. Seriously, if you haven’t read my other posts on Social Engineering, please do so right now.