My wife got on the hook by a scammer today! She’s not a technophobe by any means, so it’s quite unsettling. Here’s what happened…
She received email asking if she would like to be interviewed on a podcast of a well known “influencer”, about her business and her expertise.
Over a series of emails a time gets booked for a Zoom pre-call to go over the schedule for the interview the next day.
Zoom link gets sent, which my wife clicks on, the link does open Zoom application on computer and my wife waits, the application says “host has been notified and will join soon”. She does not enter any login credentials, the application looks to be actual Zoom app.
But after 30 min of waiting, host never joined.
Then she tells me what happened and I investigate, finding out this has happened to others.
I read through the correspondence between her and scammer, first email says they will remunerate her for her time.
For scammer to not get on the call, I’m wondering why they didn’t take the next step? And was the next step to get her on the call and try to somehow get her to divulge her bank details so they can “pay”her? I have previously listened to the
@junseth social engineering calls, it gives me chills how persuasive they are…
Or have they somehow been able to access the computer in the 30 min she was waiting in the lobby of the call with the application open? I’m 80% sure the application is the real Zoom.
If they did get access to the computer, what could they have gotten, and what should I do from here?
This is a fantastic example where the Nostr Web of Trust would have stopped this in its tracks, as my wife could have checked if the podcast “manager” was indeed connected to the high profile influencer via WOT, which couldn’t be faked.
If we are possibly still vulnerable please advise!
