That’s what Andy and I used to say a lot. Now I’m trotting it out again, along with Dreamers beware!
I received an email from an old colleague’s account asking if I could send her niece an Amazon birthday gift card. For some reason Amazon wouldn’t accept my colleague’s credit card and she would reimburse me when she got it sorted out. I haven’t seen her in years, but my warm feelings for her washed over me and I was happy to help. The Dreamer was probably the closest Adobe type to describe it.
Those feelings disappeared when I received a follow up email saying the niece wanted something more expensive, could I send more money. I phoned Amazon to try to cancel the gift card but it had already been redeemed, so I talked to their fraud department. They’ll see what they can do. They also gave me a link to the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center and I filed a complaint there.
I also looked through my emails and found another email address for my friend and wrote to her using that account. She said yes, her account had been hacked and she had spent all afternoon answering phone calls and emails like mine, besides getting it cleared up with Comcast. She asked me to send the scam correspondence to Comcast, which I did.
Anyway, I may or may not be out some money, depending on what Amazon does, but I was able to help my friend a bit. And it feels good to do my part fighting fraud by sharing my information with the various fraud departments. It also feels good to have switched almost immediately into a problem-solving mode rather than getting upset.
If I had to use an Adobe creativity type to describe it, it would be The Maker with its focus, dedication, and developing mastery. Fun stuff. Great blog fodder.
March 14, 2022
Oh, you shouldn’t have got hooked. Well, hopefully it will all work out and you’ll get your money back.
I’m usually very good about things like this. But I do love that woman and only thought about the chance to do something for her….until the wake up second request.
It is good that you have such a great attitude about all of this! You are really living up to your blog title!
I practice a lot. 🙂
I have to say that asking someone to give a gift is a well-known scam, but luckily you twigged fairly quickly so you didn’t get seriously defrauded. All these internet scammers are a menace.
Yes. I hope my telling Comcast and the FBI will encourage them to catch the crooks.
Oh no, that’s awful. I hate that there are so many scammers out there who make their way in life by cheating other people
Me too!
how hard that must be for the woman who was scammed and then all her email contacts…here’s hoping she manages to stop it all happening.
Yes, I felt the same way.
I created todays post last week and did not post until today, if I had posted it might have saved you from going through this. the info today is really scary and most will not read it, but I know you will just like I did…we are under cyber attack from Russia and emails is their biggest weapon and next is all the social media….
Thank you!
I will try to be very aware now…thank you for letting us know what happened.
Sandra’s post is even better!
Good for you, catching on quickly and taking action. Work smarter, not harder!
Yes. 🙂
I just went to a class this week on how to spot scams and anyone asking for a gift card for any reason is a giant red flag.
I also got an e-mail from what looked like a friend but she’d been hacked and it was the hackers asking. They’d read our emails back and forth enough to make the reason for the request sound reasonable. But we’d known each other for 70 years and neither of us had ever asked each other for money in all that time so I knew better. Plus the punctuation wasn’t perfect and hers always was. So I called her.
Hope you get your money back.
I won’t get my money back, but at least I was able to help my friend by reporting the scam.
I know we get a lot of scam calls and emails but an email from a friend would be hard to pass up. I’m so sorry that happened to her and to you.
Thanks. Lesson learned. 🙂