Phishing phone call

I’m so embarrassed to have actually fallen for this, they caught me in the middle of traveling to Wales, exhausted, distracted and on a train.

I got a very convincing phone call, i told them far too much and it never sat right with me as soon as it left my mouth. The final straw was when I thought it was taking too long for my cards to be blocked (I put it down at first to poor network coverage) so froze them myself, only to get a call telling me I needed to unfreeze them for whatever they were pretending to do to work.

I contacted Monzo via the chat and they blocked my card and Flex. Up until that point the scum bags kept calling me, but once my card was blocked they stopped. I’ve since recreated my Flex number and ordered a new debit card.

I wish he’d asked me for my password as that would’ve been a massive red flag but he never did.

Hopefully I don’t think they got anything, but man the shame I feel for falling for it sucks enough. Worst part is I never usually answer my phone, don’t know why I did today!

The number used came up as private most the time, but one number that got flagged by my phone as fraudulent (afterwards!) Is +44 345 802 1292. Not sure if that’s of help to anyone at Monzo.

How did they know my name, my number, last 4 digits of card numbers? Maybe it’s not that hard to find. How did they know that my card was frozen? How do they sleep at night?

Make sure you change the password to your email account, as access to Monzo is contingent on already having access to your email.

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Good call! Thank you.

Don’t blame yourself!

These fraudsters have got a lot more advanced over the years. Long gone are the “Ello, I am calling from your the bank”

They know all the tricks, the keywords, the points to try and reassure you and they sound professional. The main thing is that you realised and contacted Monzo and you didn’t lose any money because of it.

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Sadly, this information could come from any number of places. It’s frequently given to shops and websites when you pay, some of it is printed on till receipts, it’s often visible on “my account” pages on websites, etc.

But it’s also possible that your own security hasn’t been up to scratch, so consider reviewing it. You don’t need to go overboard, but think about

  • Using a password manager so you’re not using the same password for multiple different websites/services
  • Running an antivirus scan on your computer to make sure you don’t have any malware that might be collecting and sharing information about you
  • Using two factor authentication on websites that support it (particularly important to do this for your email account)

There’s more advice here: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/cyberaware/

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They won’t have, it would be a move try and trick you into believing they were “legit”

First don’t blame yourself, many of us may well have fallen for the same thing.

Secondly, thanks for sharing your experience so others can learn from it too.

Thirdly, I hope you manage to get things resolved. I had similar where someone hacked my amazon account, it made me feel very vulnerable for a while

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You absolutely should not feel any shame. We are way beyond the point where these scams only fool ‘gullible’ people (if such a thing were ever true). Even security experts can get taken in by these scams.

Today’s lesson in how not to get scammed comes from “Mitch,” the pseudonym I picked for a reader in California who shared his harrowing tale on condition of anonymity. Mitch is a veteran of the tech industry — having worked in security for several years at a fairly major cloud-based service — so he’s understandably embarrassed that he got taken in by this confidence scheme.

You actually did very well – realised quickly what was going on, froze your card, contacted Monzo, blocked any damage. So you should congratulate yourself for being aware and acting on your suspicion.

There’s some good advice in this thread, but the key thing to remember to avoid scams:

If someone calls saying they are from your bank, simply say to them, “No problem, I’ll call you back on your published number, is there a reference I should provide to pick up this issue when I do?”

Never continue a call with your bank (or other organisation that handles your personal information) that’s come out of the blue, always call them back using the number on their website or your card.

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Would be good for Monzo to throw its might behind the 159 Stop Scams number.

https://stopscamsuk.org.uk/159

Hope it gets sorted! Just wondering if you weren’t exhausted, distracted and traveling would you still have fallen for it?
Be super careful, but it must be a daily occurrence people fall for this! Regardless how many times banks tell us to be careful….maybe we’re to trusting?

Yup. My cybersecurity professor back at college had fallen victim to a phishing scam in the past and his academic credentials were about as expert as you can get in this field. Not to mention his experience. He knew all the tricks (part of his job was demonstrating them at conferences), all the warning signs, and still got defrauded.

No one gets defrauded at Monzo, but only because they use their own verb.

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