I know someone who got had by a spearfishing call. They knew all the details about his phone contract, sounded 100% legit. The scammer got thousands of dollars in prepaid SIM cards from his account.

After the police investigation, turned out that the scammer was actually a former employee of the phone company who downloaded a copy of the customer list when he got fired.

[–] [email protected] 87 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This is why even if I think something is 100% legit, if a place calls me asking for anything I tell them I have to check on it and call back. Then I'll call their known public number and go through that way. I've avoided a couple scam situations like this

[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 days ago

Honestly this is so simple and effective at stopping these sort of scams dead in their tracks. When you call in to help desk and say “I was just on the phone with your agents about a payment problem” and they don’t see any record, it’ll set off all sorts of alarm bells. Especially if it’s the bank.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

This is literally the correct way to proceed in any inbound communication. Doesn't matter who it is, the more authority they claim the faster to hang up.

They will try and trigger your lizard brain and make you feel like you must act now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

I've done this many times in the past, and not really sure what it was about this call that I didn't.

That's just made me wonder how much of a psychological aspects scammers are employing in there scams?