Our writer intentionally gets himself caught up in an online phishing scam—for science!
Our reporter goes undercover to see what happens when you voluntarily give your information and credit card info to Facebook spammers.
For as long as the internet has been around, two things have been a constant given: always being one or two clicks away from lewd material, and always being a couple of clicks away from a scam.
Before the days of social media, these scams usually came in the form of some wrongly deposed prince reaching out to you for help to transfer his family’s wealthy estate and giving you a little something in return for your effort—if only you’d be so kind as to share your bank account information with him first.
With the advent of large online retailers and social media sites, however, most online crooks have since moved on to trying to fool people with phishing scams via pop-up ads, spam comments, or e-mails made to look like legitimate corporate correspondence about account updates and security breaches. We all know that accidentally supplying your name, address, and credit card information in such scenarios can potentially have disastrous results, but to what extent? Our Japanese reporter Go Hatori decided to find out…
It didn’t take long for Go to find a potential scam. While browsing the official Facebook page for Yumi Furusato, a jewelry salon in Omotesando, Tokyo, which RocketNews24 featured in a (Japanese-language) article before, his eyes immediately fell on a comment and link from a potential scammer.
Clicking on the link revealed a notice informing him in grammatically incorrect English that his account would be deactivated if he didn’t supply the following information:
▼ Hmm, seems legit…
Not wanting to risk his own personal safety, Go held off on entering his information until he was ready to proceed with a disposable phone, a fake Facebook account, and a pre-paid debit card.
▼ Those are some mad selfie stick skills.
Unfortunately during that short period of time, the original site had at some point disappeared. But not to fear—Ms. Furukawa had our reporter’s back, and was kind enough to supply him with a link to another suspicious comment that had been posted on her page.
▼ Only 24 hours, you say?! There’s no time to lose!
It goes without saying that, just by looking at the “b” in “Facebook”, there’s no way this link could be official or trustworthy.
This particular font discrepancy was most easily distinguishable on an iPhone, but still noticeable enough to raise concerns no matter which platform the comment was viewed it on.
This was it! The experiment was about to unfold.
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