Getting Scammed Sucks!
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And I felt violated
When I realized how stupid I had been I felt like I had been violated. It’s not that I didn’t know any better, I left my guard down and it cost me $2,000.00.
In case you are sleeping under a rock like I was and are not aware of all of the ways people will rip you off, here’s just one example of how it works. Reminder, this is just one example!!!
I happen to have been traveling for the holidays. I was away from home and I thought that I had taken care of all that I needed to take care of to have a safe and enjoyable couple of weeks away. I just didn’t remember to take my effing brains with me! If it sounds as if I’m beating myself up…well…I am! That’s part of the feeling of violation that an event like this left with me. I knew better! Revealing this drama is incredibly vulnerable for me and I’m doing it solely to help another human being either be aware of others in this predicament or to at least feel like they have some company.
Now, the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say!
I had been in the security field before I retired. Not cyber security, but close enough to know that there are some really deceptive people in the world whose function it seems to be to separate both the suspecting and the unsuspecting from their valuables and or belongings…and much of their self-respect as well.
If you’ve never been Spoofed, here’s how it can happen. Spoofing is defined by Wikipedia as follows:
“Caller ID spoofing is the practice of causing the telephone network to indicate to the receiver of a call that the originator of the call is a station other than the true originating station. This can lead to a caller ID display showing a phone number different from that of the telephone from which the call was placed.”
What this spoof looked like in my case was a telephone call from what appeared to be my financial institution. The caller was using the customer service number from my bank so I did not recognize it as a scammer. I thought…
