The reason for this began at 5:30 this morning when my phone started sending me messages from Facebook Messenger ostensibly from my brother. A little hand waving in the air at me and messages saying (very briefly) "hello". Both of these are not behaviours that are usual for my brother, especially at 5:30am so I opened nothing and instead sent him an email letting him know what was going on and asking him why he was up so darned early as that isn't like him hee hee...and also I've never known him to limit himself to a one-word message LOL.... So far I haven't heard back from him (he probably really is still sleeping!)
Then I heard from my sister that they had received a message from my brother this morning asking for money from them to purchase I-tunes music for his niece!! My smart brother-in-law said what is your niece's name? Ummmm Clara? - nope, guess again :) Then "my brother" told my brother-in-law that he was on his way to Manila! That's news to me! Have a safe trip!!
So let this be a wee warning this Sunday morning....I've also had a couple other things happen online recently such as disgusting stuff in my spam folder! "SEND TO TRASH PEOPLE AND THEN EMPTY YOUR TRASH!"
I also encountered a charity that I became suspicious of...always go with your gut - if something seems hinky it probably is! I researched the charity, made sure it was Canadian as I was planning to donate $25.00Cdn per month. I do this with a couple of other charities and have had no issues. After taking the initial $25.00 they took an additional payment of $67.41. This was just a couple of days after taking the $25.00! I called them...you can imagine how that went. Right, not well. So I called Mastercard who is disputing it on my behalf. Fortunately I have a letter they sent through snail mail that referred to my monthly payment of $25.00 so will send that to Mastercard.
The final online problem I've encountered (yesterday) was when I was working on my Income Tax. I was informed on the Canadian federal government website that for the next few weeks certain parts of Cdn tax info (specifically "MY ACCOUNT" )won't be available online!! Come back in a couple of weeks everyone - like that won't bog down the system at all...groan..... I thought doing things online was supposed to be faster - I thought wrong! Sigh....
At least I haven't been hacked....yet!!
It is amazing how clever these cooks are . They will think of ways I would never dream of.
ReplyDeleteGood to change your passwords. I've experienced that - they call it cloning where they steal your name/and or facebook picture and set up a duplicate messenger account where they can messenger you. It happened to my friend - she was messengering me weird things about a great lottery meanwhile I was texting her on the phone at the same time. We reported to facebook and that fake profile got removed, you don't even need to be hacked as they've figured these things out. We have both had our ccs ripped off but thankfully in Canada we actually have a lot of protection against credit card fraud, the last time someone charged $800 in itunes charged. My itunes account has no cc, just a gift certificate attached so they easily verified it wasn't me - turns out 8 fraudulent itunes accounts had been set up. Weird....like they wanted to steal streaming movies and music?!?
ReplyDeleteYes, I got a shock to receive an email quoting a password I was using for unimportant sites on the internet and trying to blackmail me to send Bitcoins on the basis that the blackmailer (Russian e-mail address)had taken over my computer and secretly videoed me using the camera on my PC looking at porn! If I didn't co-operate he was going to send copies of the film he'd made to everyone in my address book! Apart from the fact that I have no reason to look at such sites, I don't have a camera on my PC so I knew it was just a chancer although the fact he had my password was upsetting. Needless to say I too have changed all my passwords and now have completely different ones for every account.
ReplyDeleteGood Advice. I change passwords fairly often and use totally different emails for different things. I can always tel when an email address has been sold based on the new and different emails that appear in my Spam folder.
ReplyDeleteMy 80-year-old Dad received a phone call last week from his "grandson." Thankfully, Dad was quick enough to ask the caller's name - at which point they hung up. I wonder how many kind-hearted elderly people are taken in by this scam. I really despise people who steal from innocent people! If you're smart enough to go to the trouble of doing this, get a job!!
ReplyDeleteYes. I need to do this. I'm one of those exceptionally lazy users who never changes her passwords and has the same info for multiple sites. I know. Thank you for the reminder!! x
ReplyDeleteI had the same happen to me as Caree - had my password partially right and wanted $800 in bitcoins or they would "out me" for looking at porn!!! I just forwarded it to our Informatics Division (I guess they could block it). But it is scary how they can access your personal stuff isn't it. I also had a couple of incidents of "friends" sending me emails asking me for money but of course these crooks didn't write in the same way as my friends would have spoken so I just deleted them.
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