Last night I was phished and I can’t quite believe it.
It’s been less than a week since I was explaining to my mother in law about the risks and strategies these scammers use to prey on their victims following her own dalliance with internet fraud.
Less than 12 hours since we were chatting with our friends about the topic.
I feel embarrassed and wonder if I should?
It had been a long day, I was tired and it was nearly 10pm. I had just come downstairs following a lengthy and arduous negotiation with my 3 year old about why she needed to go to bed at a less ridiculous hour.
And there it was, a notification highlighting a page violation on the eOpinion Facebook page.
I was stunned. What copyright had I infringed? I must fix this immediately. 🙄
In hindsight I do feel a bit of a wally but in my defence, tiredness aside, it was a good one.
It looked flawless. The copy was perfect English, unlike most of the usual messages I see.
And there was me tapping in my email and password like an idiot.
They even asked me for my two-factor authentication number.
It was about this time I had another notification from Facebook asking if I was logging in, in Surrey. I was nowhere near Surrey!
And a split second later I realised what I had done.
It was a direct message from a page called ‘Page Violations’ and they had the FB logo. It was not from FB direct as I had assumed throughout the 4 minute episode.
Thankfully Facebook froze my account straight away, long before I had even realised.
I’m a lucky boy on this occasion. My Facebook account uses an old email address and a random password so risk exposure elsewhere is very low.
My ego is bruised but that’s about it.
I wasn’t going to tell this story but it’s worth highlighting how sophisticated and convincing these phishing scams are becoming. I consider myself pretty internet savvy and they got me hook, line and sinker.
Be careful out there and triple check everything before you click on something, however genuine it looks. If in doubt ask someone. Anyone. Although probably not me!