can you believe this phishing

[jcarter]

They guy couldn't remember his password, so Max had to try many times.
No, the phone was charged and fine, just sitting there on the seat 'laughing' at us.

Last year we gave away our big F-150 4WD which was 25 years old, to a close friend, he is restoring it.
And we gave away our wonderful 24 year old 4WD GMC Suburban to a friend who has a roofing business, he welded up 2 holes in the frame and put a new rear bumper on it, and its all around town. Strange that neither of them ever had to have anything replaced with the exhaust systems, except for the new hangars my husband would replace now and then.
I miss those cars, but we had to get newer ones. Replaced them both with similar cars.

Who was the guy who had an electric car, and a Honda gasoline generator in the trunk a few years ago?

[Xairbusdriver]

Just to refresh this thread:

SWMBO just got a very nicely written email from a fellow in Switzerland. He is a manager in the "SWISS Bank (UNION BANK OF SWITZERLAND" (which apparently has some extreme HR problems!). This gentleman has been unable to find any relatives for "the late Mr. Moses Saba Masri", a "Jewish business mogul from Mexico that died ... many years ago. No doubt years before the Interwebs!!

At any rate, since Mr. Smith (a fine old Swiss family name!) can not find any living relatives, he would like my "represent [my wife] as the next of kin and as beneficiary" of "US$ 28,150.000.00,,". Apparently Mr. Smith has trouble remembering which 'decimal' system to use in Switzerland. He assures my wife that this is all legal and honest. BTW, he gets 60% for his 'work'. Oh yes, please respond with name, age, occupation, phone number and address within 14 days.

I advised my wife to try to get 75% instead of the miserly 40% this guy is offering even though it will be difficult to compute my "consultancy fee" on the odd amount.

[Paddy]

Well, apart from not being able to spell Moises' name, the scammer wasn't entirely lying. He died in 2010 in a helicopter crash - and he was wealthy. The rest, of course, is pure invention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moisés_Saba

"I know...I'll use a REAL person, just in case the mark happens to know how to Google! Yeah! That oughta do it!" LOL.

[jcarter]

Even more phishing, pretty clever nowadays.
 
We got an email from BOA to 'update our information', and it asked for darn near everything.
Of course it was a fake.
But a week later from the same bank, we got a letter in the snail-mail with a form to do the same. And it looked just perfect.
I knew it had to be bad, so took it to the main office of the bank in the larger town near us.

And they were astonished at how real it looked! I gave the whole thing to them, and they were going to have a conference about it.
As they knew other people would have gotten similar and it was 'going to hit the fan'.

[Paddy]

Were you supposed to mail it back somewhere or were they hoping you'd hop on the internet and give them all your info?

Because if they were asking you to mail it back, then that needs to go to the police (preferably from BOA, rather than you personally, as they'll be a little more responsive to a big bank making the complaint, methinks) and an investigation opened. They will have a return mail address to watch and should be able to nail the fraudsters. And it's mail fraud - no laughing matter in the US.

This sort of thing has been going on for a while: https://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20180228/scams-amp-swindles-double-check-that-letter-from-bank

The interesting thing is that they're willing to actually spend the money to send out letters - and one would hope most of them fail to elicit the desired response.

The other disturbing thing I discovered is that Bank of Montreal here in Canada HAS been sending out letters to some customers asking them to provide SIN (social insurance number - same thing as US SSN) and date of birth. Seems they didn't collect required info on some account holders when the accounts were opened and in order to comply with CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) requirements, they're sending out letters with a self-addressed postage paid return envelope - which goes to the CRA. Of course, a lot of people getting these think they're a scam - but they're actually not. The bank is being rather stupid, IMHO - they should ask people to come into the branch or to fill out the form and drop it off at the branch.

We're all becoming increasingly suspicious of everything - I have almost missed a couple of important calls lately because there was no caller ID other than the phone number, which I didn't recognize. And my cable provider tried repeatedly to reach me about resolving an issue we'd been having but failed because we'd blocked their number on our phone because we kept getting scammers spoofing that number and got fed up a year ago and blocked it. Can't win, these days!!

[jcarter]

Exactly!  The bank wanted a snail-mail reply. I never thought to take it to our police department, maybe the bank will.
Your link described it just perfectly.  The bank manager actually tried a phone number on the letter while I was in her office, and it was a fake one.

Also we dont pick up the phone if we dont recognize the number either. And if its important, they darn well better leave a message, or I will block them. I will change my message pretty soon to make it more precise and let scam callers know that they will be blocked.

Some of our friends and local businesses have decided to go with Comcast, our cable provider, for their phones. But they are very unreliable, and for example, our dog's veterinarian did this, and one of their numbers has no ID and Ive told them to fix it, but they havent yet. But they always leave a message, so they can get along till its fixed.

So many scams going on all the time now, we sure have to be aware of how they work and how to block or ignore or report them.

[Xairbusdriver]

The interesting thing is that they're willing to actually spend the money to send out letters

I’m still getting emails from folk who are getting snail mail letters from some of the 50+ scams described on my old mailscamalert web site. I use a form letter when the pleas for help look real. If it doesn’t bounce, I use another “standard” message in one more attempt to get people to read some of the text on every single page that explains why they should never, ever send info to these dirt bags! Most have not only done that but have also sent money! Yes, there are still scammers using snail mail! Perhaps because there is so much more ‘news’ about fake emails.

[jcarter]

That bank one which we got was very carefully done, even the local bank manager said it was very slick.

[Xairbusdriver]

Just got an "Apple" email announcing they have released a "Major macOS Security" patch. Of course,

• it's not to my primary Apple addy
• the links point to "10eleven.com"
• it uses Flash (I don't allow off-site images, Mail is telling me my Flash Player is out of date.

I guess these Phishers aren't aware of how Apple makes sure we don't use the Mac too long without getting repeated and irritating notices about updates.