This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/scams by /u/ThatWolfWriter on 2024-09-24 07:26:40+00:00.

I was out in the woods birding the other day and got a call from “my credit card company” about “suspected fraud.” The young man was very polite and professional-sounding. He had my name. He asked me if I’d made a transaction in Houston, and I hadn’t because, well, I was in San Francisco.

Then, of course, my phone was “breaking up” and he needed to call me from a different number. (This was plausible because my phone is a POS that desperately needs replacing, plus I was in the woods, but I digress.) This made me suspicious anyway, because hm, especially since it was a Hawaii number he called me back from.

I told him I was in the woods and couldn’t really do anything at the moment, but go ahead and cancel the card and ship me a new one. And then he said “I’m going to text you a link to click to verify your identity.”

TWEET. FLAG ON THE PLAY. A BIG RED ONE.

I told him that it seemed like a really good way to steal my identity, and that I’d call the credit card company when I was in my hotel room and not in the middle of the freaking woods to get this straightened out. He was very very insistent that I had to click that link right now or they couldn’t cancel the card, and if I didn’t do it I’d be on the hook for that several-hundred-dollar charge in Houston.

He also had my social security number, and read it off. Which was stolen in a data breach, and I told him so, and that it cut no ice with me. (I’m also thinking that my social is not the one associated with that account, but I’d need to check and be sure.) The exchange got heated, and I basically accused him of trying to scam me, because we all know that a real credit card company will never send you a text and tell you to click a link in it. Especially a link like the one he sent me, which was random gobbledygook rather than a real [mybank] website address. He kept insisting. I kept saying no. I may have sworn at him. Not sorry.

He eventually hung up on me.

Surprise, surprise, when I checked my account, it wasn’t flagged and the “transaction” he’d told me about from Houston was nowhere to be found.

Stay frosty out there, friends.