I’m super cautious with these messages like I’m sure we all are but on Monday I ordered a printer from Amazon. They said it would arrive on Wednesday. On Wednesday I was working from home and I got a text from “Purolator” saying they’d tried to deliver my package and failed. Shit! I’d been listening to beats too loud to hear the knock on the door! I ran outside to see if the delivery guy was still on my street. No one was around…and then I realized, damn, they got me (to dash outside, anyway).
These things can fail 99.99% of the time but when they land on someone at just the right moment, it’s so easy to just go on autopilot and do the dumb thing.
This type of stuff is diabolical for old folks who just weren't inoculated to these scams. I feel terrible for them. Get calls often asking me to help interpret.
Keep it very simple: never give an SMS authentication code to anyone on a phone call, in response to a text message or email, or as part of any checkout or purchase. They are only to be used when logging in to an online account. Anything else is a scam.
Even that may be too complicated, now that I read it back.
Unfortunately there are many companies that actually rely on SMS confirmation codes in real-time, which include reading it back to them.
A legitimate and generally well liked company, and its real helpful service representative used this method to verify my identify before they could finish their support effort.
I’m super cautious with these messages like I’m sure we all are but on Monday I ordered a printer from Amazon. They said it would arrive on Wednesday. On Wednesday I was working from home and I got a text from “Purolator” saying they’d tried to deliver my package and failed. Shit! I’d been listening to beats too loud to hear the knock on the door! I ran outside to see if the delivery guy was still on my street. No one was around…and then I realized, damn, they got me (to dash outside, anyway).
These things can fail 99.99% of the time but when they land on someone at just the right moment, it’s so easy to just go on autopilot and do the dumb thing.
Why don't Google and Apple adopt passcodes to avoid this scam from working? Their operating systems already support passcodes.
This type of stuff is diabolical for old folks who just weren't inoculated to these scams. I feel terrible for them. Get calls often asking me to help interpret.
Keep it very simple: never give an SMS authentication code to anyone on a phone call, in response to a text message or email, or as part of any checkout or purchase. They are only to be used when logging in to an online account. Anything else is a scam.
Even that may be too complicated, now that I read it back.
Unfortunately there are many companies that actually rely on SMS confirmation codes in real-time, which include reading it back to them.
A legitimate and generally well liked company, and its real helpful service representative used this method to verify my identify before they could finish their support effort.