We recently lost a beloved cat. My wife posted “lost pet” notices on social media, and local web forums, including her gmail address and phone number. Two days later, she received an e-mail from somebody stating they had found our cat. My wife, in a bundle of excitement, responded right back. The scamster told her that they needed to verify her identity, and that she would just need to reply back with a 4 digit code that she would get in a verification email from Google.
She then got a verification email from Google. She sent the code back to the scamsters. At that stage, they were able to get into her gmail account, and were able to hijack her phone number using a web phone service clone of her number. I quickly figured it out, and told her to change her gmail password asap. My wife was in absolute tears.
The next day, our daughter got a text that looked like it came from my wife. The text asked for her credit card number, ss#, and bank account number in order to finalize my wife’s will. Luckily, my daughter didn’t have her ss#, and called my wife to tell her. Had my daughter not made that call, it would have been a mess.
My wife was then forced to inform all of her contacts to look out for strange text or email requests, and we had to resecure all of our accounts.
All this, after losing a family pet.
These people are despicable human beings.
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04-13-2022, 10:44 PM
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