Actually just looked this up, not sure why I didn’t before - concrening part is they knew who my PCP was and changed their dial out phone to show as my PCPs office calling me:
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Thanks for posting this. Coincidentally, my dad is also 88. He is SO vulnerable to scams. I forwarded your post to Dad’s bookkeeper. Today, she is going to give him a new debit card that has a limit on it. If he balks, I told her to share your story and also the one about my husband falling for the fake video of Sanjay Gupta endorsing vitamins for memory improvement.
I worry enough about DH falling for stuff, but Dad is even more concerning. Ugh.
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Today I got something – actually, two things – that I’ve never seen before.
I have a gmail account but rarely use it. I also have the Google calendar but almost never use it. If I do, it’s for “evergreen” reminders like birthdays.
Today I got two notifications on my Google calendar from “Norton,” telling me that they’re renewing my subscription for a year for $409. I got the first one, considered it, decided it was spam, and then 30 seconds later got the second one.
And of course when I go to my Google calendar, there’s nothing on there for today.
Bizarre.
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We just had YET ANOTHER automatic Norton charge on our credit card. Good grief, it’s a cancer. I thought we had gotten rid of all of those. It was on DH’s card, so I made him call. It probably took 15 minutes just to figure out which email address and password were correct. To the employee’s credit, she stuck with it until she found the account and reversed the charge. I am really getting sick of these automatic renewals. My son has had one for years that keeps showing up - he got the subscription when he was manic and now he can’t remember his account info. Every July, I have to call the credit card to block the company since the block lasts only a year!
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I always get notifications about norton, geek squad and more but so far nothing has actually been charged to any of our CCards. Yikes! Maybe cancel the card that keeps being fraudulently used and get a new one!
I don’t think it’s fraudulent, I think they’re old subscriptions that just keep renewing and I miss them. But now I get notifications of every CC transaction, so I can catch this nonsense.
I’ve learned that if a company refuses to reverse an automatic renewal, Capital One will do it for you.
I’d still call it fraudulent and ask for a new card.
Yeah, I may have to. I just checked, and the charge hasn’t been reversed. Good grief.
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Disney+ told me they’d take me off subscription but didn’t. I had to contest charges, cancel card & get a new one.
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I’ve gotten two different supposed invitations to a party through one of the online invitation companies. But it was clearly fraud. The email address at the bottom was not the invitation company and I was pretty sure neither of these people were really throwing a party. Also, normally when you click on the invitation, it takes you right to the invitation, but this one if you clicked on the invitation and wanted you to login or register. Not happening.
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My friend who had the major hack of all her financial accounts (credit card, 401k, pension) which they traced back to having a comcast landline, also discovered that T-mobile was charging her for insurance on her phone, but she bought that through Apple when she bought her phone. I guess her phone is really really safe now, doubly insured.
I had to (try) get my 401k paperwork from 2 accounts this week and while I could get into my T. Rowe Price account, I couldn’t get into my TSP account. They asked if I wanted a code sent to me, I said yes, they sent a 4 digit code which came through on a chain with some of my Chase accounts and when I entered it it said it should be a 6 digit code and they’ll send it to me by mail. Nice to know I have money but too bad I can’t get to it. After looking in every place I can think of for my 2025 statement, I found the 2024, then the 2023, then found a letter that said they aren’t sending them any more (no 2025) ‘because they are all online.’ Great, unless they won’t let you in online.
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So yesterday I’m sitting at my computer doing my thing and the HUGE spam message came on my screen that my computer’s been affected by a virus and I need to click here [and undoubtedly pay someone mega-bucks] to fix it. It was accompanied by sound of a woman’s voice warning “Danger! Danger!”
I turned the computer off, then 10 seconds later turned it on again. The spam-y message was still there.
So I turned the computer off again and left it for an hour or two. When I turned it on again, all was normal.
I have anti-virus protection. So what the hell caused that??
Sometimes happens if you open something on facebook.
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I do that most every day.
Sometimes clearing your history will eliminate these sites
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DH almost got sucked into an employment scam through LinkedIn. He’s retired but open to consulting and was in conversation with “Ilsa” for a job that was a close fit and seemed to be open to a short term gig. Ilsa was really chatty, including reaching out on the weekend to talk about her charity work with orphans etc, but hesitant to actually meet in person.
He was pretty flattered, but listened when I expressed concerns. And when he contacted her alleged organization, they’d never heard of her…
After he asked her to email him from the company account, she said the project was a side project not actually part of the company, and has gone radio silent ever since.
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What would Lisa get from this scam? Free services from your husband? Ask him to buy into her charity? I don’t see the upside as if your husband agrees to work for her as a consultant, would he ever pay her?
There was a news item recently here where a poor man was scammed into putting money into a Bitcoin ATM as a scam (we have those here and while they are more regulated now than before, but they are still dangerous) and the police were called to tell him to stop putting money into the ATM and he was so confused and insistent on putting the money in because he HAD to or something bad would happen. It was had to watch and especially hard to think he’d be preyed on again.
Ilsa may have asked for husband’s bank account info so she could direct deposit his payment.
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And a W9 with his SSN!
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Yes, exactly! This happened to my wife a couple of years ago. Someone on LinkedIn who looked legitimate (seemed to work for a specialized consulting firm), invited her to do a one-hour paid consultation for $200. They exchanged messages and details for a couple of days and everything seemed fine until the person sent over documents, including a W-9 asking for her SSN before any official engagement or verifiable contract. That was a huge red flag for me.
When my wife said she wasn’t comfortable providing her SSN, the person insisted it was “required for tax purposes.” She declined - and never heard from them again.
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