[nothis]

>When I read the thread now, it's obviously full of red flags. I was successfully manipulated, and whilst I'm certainly not as clever as all the people pointing out they would have caught this from sentence one, I believe I'm also not the lowest hanging fruit in terms of a target :-) Makes you wonder what this will look like when these scams evolve another couple of generations in terms of complexity ...

I think this is a social skills moment. For those that claim it's "easy" to spot: This is not the right time for people to brag about how they would have totally spotted it. This is mostly for protecting people who (as most people in this world) don't have time to build up a solid understanding of all aspects of internet security. If you don't care about these people, as some sort of Darwinian schadenfreude, stfu. If you do, focus on their perspective, not your brilliant detective skills.

[alistairSH]

I'd wager >50% of those that claim "Ah ha! I'd spot it here!" would fail in real life. Arm-chair quarterbacking is easy. Spotting the scam in real life, when you're walking down the street or otherwise distracted with life? Much harder.

[ryandrake]

I don’t know... this is not a “social skills” thing. It’s a very simple rule that should be easy for anyone to follow: never talk to any business who calls you. Ask who they are, hang up, and call the official customer support number. That’s it. No wizardry, charisma, or smooth talking ability needed. Get who they are and hang up.

Personally, I don’t even answer the phone anymore unless the number is one of my contacts. Looking at the last 30 days of call history, a good 95% of my incoming calls were spammers who didn’t leave a message or spammers who did.

The last time a legitimate number called me I didn’t recognize was probably a year ago. It was my daughter’s school. They left a message and I called them back immediately. That’s probably the safest way of dealing with the security trash fire called the phone system.

[alistairSH]

Yeah, hanging up and calling the 800 number on your card is the best route.

But, the responses on Twitter weren't "never talk", they were "I'd know it was a scam as soon as..." (implying they'd allow the call to get that far).

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Most people claiming they would have spotted it are probably wrong anyway. They're reading the messages with the knowledge that they were sent by a scammer. Any idiot can identify these things in hindsight knowing what they're looking at. Without that context, with other things on their mind, it's much more likely they'd have been duped too.

[ghaff]

Absolutely. You're in the middle of something else. Your "bank" calls you. You're thinking "What the hell do they want and how can I deal with this as quickly as possible?" Etc. I like to think that I'd never fall for any of these scams and I'm sure I'm more conscious of the possibility than I would have been at one point. But I can't really swear that distracted me whose mind is 75% focused on some other task is as security-aware as I like to think I am.

[GoblinSlayer]

They say the generic rule of thumb here is urgency. If you can't take your time, it's a scam. I was previously scammed several times with urgency, but as a rhetoric trick under a premise of impatience.