Fraud / scammers

[Ordog]

@Anarchist

It can’t be said often enough that these scams don’t work because people are stupid, it because the scammers are good at what they do.

There is this and then there are people who openly admit that “they’re not good with this technology stuff” . So they only decide to educate themselves when something like this happens instead of the reverse.

I’d recommend that anyone who doesn’t know what to look out for just spends 10 minutes looking on Google for the basics on how to stay safe online, looking at top 10 banking scams, or even enrols in one of those free Barclays bank courses. I believe you don’t even have to be one of their customers

The more that knowledge is passed around the faster these sort of scams will die out.

[Revels]

@Anarchist

I think this is a surprisingly common scam. I’ve definitely heard of it working in the past.

My girlfriend got one exactly like that recently and she’s at a new role, so was quick to reply to the boss that she would help.

As Richard said, it was the next email that rung the alarm bells. But lots of people buy things on behalf of their bosses, this wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for them.