[callalex]

My dad is getting up there in age now. He has been on the internet since its birth, and is very familiar and savvy with how it works. He knows how DNS and HTTPS and DKIM, etc. work at a very technical level. He knows how search engines work and ads work at a technical and business level. He is familiar with all of the scams and their types, thanks to me getting him into watching scam-bait streamers/tubers.

The other day he had a flight home from an upcoming trip cancelled on him by Frontier. They sent him an email to notify him. He verified the email was legitimately from them. Frontier wanted him to resolve the issue on their website, but my mom was panicking and pressuring him to just call customer service. It turns out Frontier literally does not have a customer service phone number, so every single result on Google is actually a scam call center. While he was slightly flustered about his plans being changed and my mom freaking out, he had a momentary lapse in his scam-dar and just followed the first official looking link for Frontier customer service in Google search results. They “helped” him “resolve” his problem, but in the process asked him for his credit card number. At the end of the call he asked them to send a confirmation email, and he immediately noticed that the mail was spoofed and not from a Frontier domain despite everything looking very official. He then gave them some very choice words and immediately cancelled his card.

I guess my point is that scams are so prevalent these days that even very sharp and savvy people can still get caught up in it sometimes. It’s also pretty insane that Frontier just doesn’t have a phone number. It’s also downright criminal that Google is happy to help scammers as long as they get a cut of the profit.