I want to start this experiment with a fact: almost half of Spaniards have been victims of a scam. This is confirmed by the CIS, the Center for Sociological Research. We spend our lives laughing at the “Nigerian prince scam”, beating ourselves in the chest and assuring ourselves that no one can fool us because the Phishing It’s a crude and somewhat mundane technique —sending emails with many letters, poor quality images, typos, etc-. But the figures indicate that at one point, half of us Spaniards were on the verge of collapse.
We are confident that no one can fool us because we do things right: we verify, we don’t answer missed calls, we don’t waste time clicking messages of questionable reliability and we make sure to review URLs, compare prices and other filters to detect scams and traps. Until we bite.
Scammers know what they are doing
My story is simple. I made a purchase from Miravia, a fairly inexpensive product that, thanks to the coupons, was almost a gift price. The days passed and delivery deadlines were not met. I knew I bought a good deal but Everything was reliable: seller and product.
So I contacted the company’s customer service. It’s a bit hidden and its management is not so accessible compared to commercial services from Amazon, PcComponentes or similar, but I managed to open a tracking case:
However, the next day I received an email. I didn’t even bother to check if the ID (identification code) This matches my order for a simple reason: the logistics company responsible for my shipment was GLS and this message I received came from Correos. Impossible to scam with something like this:
But the order still hasn’t arrived. Another two weeks passed, I opened another tracking case, called the company responsible for delivering the order, who directed me to the local distribution center… you can imagine: sometimes , you can make a very stupid mistake if you simply get it wrong. . Because that’s what it’s all about Phishing, not to deceive you, but to make you believe that you are not deceived.
Bad is what ends badly
As can be seen in the message below, On March 20, GLS company updated the order status. But I received no confirmation, neither from Miravia by email or iMessage nor from the logistics company – I had left them my cell number. Of course, I saw how they just put me on a WhatsApp channel with a bot that made updates… and only gave me circular responses.
And here’s the problem: on the same day, the 20th, I received the following message at dawn in the ‘Messages’ application on the iPhone, which you can read below. Message is one of the few apps that periodically clean up suspicious senders and which I hardly use because I changed my phone. This means that I no longer receive the dozens of advertising notices that I received some time ago. However, here it is:
Yes, the message is not at all reliable: it comes from Correos, not GLS, once again. But now I had forgotten. In fact, you only need to take a look to see errors in the use of colons. But I clicked away wondering what they were referring to, without thinking, even though the link is clearly something to be wary of. I typed and entered only two pieces of information: my email and my phone number.
Finally, this shortener was banned by the administrator for SPAM. That is to say, this shortener has been used in hundreds of messages for the same scam purpose, hundreds of people have entered into it like me. And a few less reported. Me among them: Since I clicked, I have continued to receive calls from this number and others.
As you see, two attempts Phishing in parallel, one to email and another to mobile. I didn’t hit the first one, but I did hit the second one. The result of all this was not serious, no one broke into my house, but my data was exposed. It could have been worse, attaching my bank account/credit card number or ID. If something like this happens, my recommendation is always to at least change your credit card. Biometric security, two-factor authentication and changing passwords will do the rest.
Regarding the request, two days later I received a response. It was lost and they reimbursed me 100% of the expense. I could have processed a new order, but I preferred to avoid further disappointment. You know what they say: the best way to save money is not to buy. All joking aside, with this experience I just want to point out that No matter how secure your iPhone is, the weakest link in the chain is always the human factor. It’s like a door with a thousand locks and only one of them is locked. Be careful.
Cover image | Liza Summer for Pexels
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