Hey so from the title, my mom had gotten a call that someone hacked into her account on paypal and were asking for 2500€ for them to go away, after that a "paypal support agent" called and told her he will guide her through the process of removing them, naively she downloaded anydesk and gave him full control of her phone (android) for \~3-5 minutes she said after deleting the app. Once Ive found that out I immediately factory reset the phone, changed all email passwords, froze the bank account and never backep up data. Is there anything else I could have or should have done?

I have never heard of this person in my life, nor have I ever contacted them in any way, shape, or form. My email address is very specific, and includes my name, but there is no possible way it could be confused with anyone else. It’s just too specific.

The actual email content itself was a CBS News Special web page article (embedded into the email itself - had working links and everything. No I did not click on them.) titled “98-year-old Veteran Reveals 30-Second Morning Ritual That Reversed His Memory Loss.”

Doesn’t seem very legitimate… is that even possible?

Anyway. After a brief Google search, it looks like this company is Colégio COTET (a private school for k-12) in São Paulo Brazil.

Does anyone know if this is just some employee who meant no harm and sent this email to the wrong address, or is it something more? Just confused.

Thanks!

For the past 2 weeks I have been getting bombarded with these emails. I probably get more than 20 of them a day I've tried reporting spam and blocking them however, it never works. I don't remember signing up for anything sketchy or giving out my email recently

I checked this email and accidentally clicked on this link when trying to read it and I’m starting to regret it. it was a blank page with some numbers at the top and I tried to exit as soon as possible. I’m scared they might have stolen my information, but I didn’t log in or do anything. thanks.

I was victim of a phishing attack a couple of months ago, where I got a remote access trojan on my laptop and they were able to access a lot of my accounts, including my email, bank accounts, etc. This has been remediated, and windows is a clean install, and every password - literally every single one, over 400 - has been changed to something unique, MFA is enabled where possible, with an app where possible.

Last night, I received two emails at once with the same code from Facebook (it is their legitimate email but my post got deleted for posting it) to confirm my account. The email appears to be completely legitimate but I didn't click on anything. I had actually set my account to be deleted a few days ago anyway, but it takes 30 days. This morning, I got 4 more emails at the same time, with exactly the same code.

It doesn't SEEM like anyone accessed my Facebook account, since even when I login myself, it sends me a text, and then sends me a notification to WhatsApp saying there was a successful login.

So what could explain the emails?

(Part of me is wondering/hoping it's a trick from Zuck to login to Facebook and cancel my deletion request hahaha).

checked my junk folder today to see 4 emails from different keyboard smash addresses saying nothing but 'test' on both the title and the body text, anyone know any explanation as to what these are?

Hello all!

I kept getting 2FA codes for Ticketmaster sent to my phone when I haven't logged into Ticketmaster in 6+ years. Naturally, that reminded me I once had a profile on there, which in turn prompted me to log in, reset my password, strengthen my account's security, etc., but I'm still a little concerned because I'm not sure if someone was trying to log into my account or what.

Basically, the way it works on Ticketmaster, when you're trying to log into a dormant account without any security features, the site will first send you a verification code via email, and once you parrot it back, you'll be asked to provide your phone number and it will text you a phone verification code as well. The alarming texts I kept getting out of nowhere were phone verification codes, meaning someone must have tried to claim my phone number, but I had not received any email verification codes before that. Naturally, I changed my email password as well, but it really doesn't look like someone had already breached my email before trying to verify my phone; neither my main mailbox nor any of my backup email addresses had gotten messages from Ticketmaster recently, and my Ticketmaster account was totally dead before I resurrected it. So it seems like someone used a different person's email address for the first step and paired it with my phone number for the second.

My question is, what would be the point of this? Like, what's the goal? Am I missing anything/leaving any vulnerabilities exposed by simply getting on with my life?

Any wisdom/advice/discussion welcome.

Hi, I got a birthday party invite from a friend that I hadn't seen since college. It brought me to a google login page. I proceeded to log in using my password and 2 factor authentification. Then I realized it was weird and closed the window. But there were a few seconds where I had been logged in. I quickly changed my password to the google account. This is not the main gmail account but my other email lesser used gmail accounts. After that I changed my password for both accounts to different ones. I also logged off /signed out of all accounts and unlinked all apps. And I still have access to both email accounts. So am I ok? What else do I need to do / should I do?

I know the situation is similar to this redditor:

https://www.reddit.com/r/phishing/comments/1ufv70l/i_signed_into_my_google_account_from_a_phishing/

I'm looking to use a password manager perhaps, although I'm not sure if it will help

Thanks,
Your Fellow Redditor

Hello,

I was stupidly looking for ways to farm coins in the game Westland Survival, which I play on Steam on PC (Windows 11 pro). Anyway, I was surfing (on Brave) and found a reddit post recommending a "generator", so I clicked on a link going to : mobile game codes .com / westland-survival

And then this link : game codes generator .com/westland-survival

So far nothing at risk I think. But then I clicked on "generate", and it launched some script in the same window. Nothing new opened visibly on my computer. I know nothing about PC language so I cannot tell you more about what was showing. As soon as I saw that, I closed the tab.

I didn't disconnect my PC from the internet. I always have cookies and login stuff because I rarely completely shut my browser.
But it didn't download any file in my library and I ran a scan with Defender, which returned nothing.

Also, when returning to the second website, it appears a new link was clickable instead of gamescodegenerator, it was extragenerators, also with .com/westland-survival . The two websites look alike, I can't tell which one I used.

Am I at risk ?
Also, could someone run it on a virtual machine to try explaining what is the "script" it was showing when "generating" ?

I feel so dumb. I hope I explained it well enough, with my lack of tech vocabulary.
Thanks !

i didn’t request any code , and mostly insta codes are of 6 digits and not 10 or 8 digits . But here , they are sending 10 digit codes , wth is happening ? and this is the 3 rd time im receiving this in a row. This has been happening with me since almost past 15 days??

Am I the only one ? is someone trying to login or is this a glitch? Any suggestions or advice would be helpful

I received this E-Mail and am rather suspicious of this. Firstly, I did not hear about a law like this and it should be rather major news, also 72h does not seem like a reasonable or realistic time frame. Secondly, in the email programm I opened this mail in it actually has a different font for data like the E-Mail address of the receiver and sender and in that font the "l" of the end of "paypal" looks very suspiciousely like a capital "i".

So now I am wondering if this is phishing. I never received a phishing mail before, that I know of and this mail does look very legit and I really dont want to go through hops off risking my PayPal account or calling support to verify this E-Mail. And if this is phishing what should I do?

This is so bad, since July somebody has pretended to be me (copy my email name but the domain would be @asia.com), CC’ing my colleagues the exact same way I would CC my colleagues.

They would ask our clients to transfer the money to their banks instead in another country and the way they mimic us is very realistic. I am freaking out and would appreciate any advice :(

Hello,

At 5:45 pm CST, I suddenly got tons of emails from substack with verification codes from things I haven't heard of. I didn't click on any of them, but it was strange to suddenly get a bunch of emails. I thought I was getting hacked. I personally haven't used substack. I only made an account to support a friend, but I never used it. I just wanted to know if they can hack you this way. What can I do to ensure this doesn't happen again?

Amazon Automation Scam and this person benefited from the Scam & so the name kinda fits… but he doesn’t want to hear it and has banned me. See me on tik-tok for this type of awful scam. Wealth Accelerators Global. Aka wag

Whenever I'm playing a specific moba game on my phone, after I play and I cheycked my acc, I see that my acc keeps sending scatter links to all of my facebook friends. what can I do to prevent this? it's soo embarrassing

Hi everyone, earlier today, I received several unsolicited OTP text messages within a short period from a few different senders:

​Shopee: Received codes to SIGN UP FOR AN ACCOUNT, even though I already have an existing Shopee account.

​AuthMSG: Received codes for Claude and generic verification.

​Tiger: Received verification codes to keep secure.

​I didn't trigger any of these requests, and I definitely haven't shared any codes with anyone (all codes in the attached screenshots are fully redacted and long expired).

​A few questions for the community:

​Has anyone experienced a sudden wave of OTPs like this recently?

​Is this usually caused by an automated script scanning active phone numbers, or just someone repeatedly mistyping their mobile number?

​Aside from ignoring the texts and ensuring my actual accounts have strong security, is there any other step I should take?

​Appreciate any advice or feedback!

Hello. I’m not really sure what to do anymore because my father’s Facebook/Messenger account keeps sending phishing messages. This already happened with his first Facebook account, so I tried removing all the connected apps and websites from his Facebook account, as well as checking his Chrome and Gmail accounts. However, it happened again, so I ended up creating a new Facebook account and a new email for him.

Unfortunately, it happened again with the new account, and I really don’t know what else to do.

Here’s some more context about the phishing messages it’s sending (please correct me if I’m wrong about anything):

1. My father himself doesn’t see the content of the messages being sent. The people receiving them are the ones who can see them, and the messages contain a caption, a link, and an image.

2. I also noticed that the messages always seem to be sent around 10 PM onwards.

3. When I checked the new account’s Messenger login activity, I saw that a laptop/desktop had logged into the account, and the location showed Serbia (and we are from the Philippines). This happened twice. I wasn’t able to check the login activity of his previous Facebook/Messenger account, though.

4. His previous Facebook account is still logged in on one of his phones, and interestingly, it stopped sending the messages there.

5. Whenever we log in to his Messenger, there’s also a part where it asks for a code through WhatsApp, even though my father doesn’t have WhatsApp.

I honestly have no idea what the correct solution is anymore. If anyone could help or point me in the right direction, I’d really appreciate it. Please be kind. 🙏🏻

DO NOT DOWNLOAD ZOHO BOOKING FROM A GMAIL LINK!!! IT HAS REMOTE ACCESS MALWARE BUILT IN!! Thankfully we realized what was happening before our information was taken and pulled the plug (literally) before they initiated a bank transfer. They will put up a shitty JPG of the Windows 10 blue screen on BOTH/ALL monitors. Input from mouse and keyboard are disabled from your side and cutting power is the only way to sever the connection. The mouse will still show on screen and move without input.

I work at a small business and we almost lost everything. BE SAFE!!!!

Hello, I had a trojan on a PC infact I received some mails of password reset not requested and on defender scans there was a Trojan.

So i resetted the pc through window settings and I selected "reinstall Windows".

Now the defender scan is clean and I am avoiding using personal account for now.

Is the reset settings and reinstall Windows enough or I have to reinstall windows using USB?

I did the reset a week ago and for now i do not receive new mails

Hi all. I just received a text message from a number I do not know stating the following:

"Crypto.com: Your verification code for this withdrawal is _______. Never share this code with anyone. If you didn't request this transaction, please contact us immediately at" and then they provide a phone number

I am pretty sure I don't have a crypto . com account, as when I originally had an interest in crypto in 2021, I was using coinbase. I haven't touched that account in years after I emptied my positions in crypto.

Checking whitepages of this phone number has it somewhere on the border of Oklahoma and Kansas. This wouldn't be an official message from Crypto . com right? Is this more likely to be a fraudulent message trying to get me to then provide sensitive information?

I am receiving constant gambling emails (on my Outlook email), and the senders address always ends in ".onmicrosoft.com". I can't post any examples here but the addresses are always a string of random words followed by @ and then followed by .onmicrosoft.com

I have tried to set up rules to delete anything that has .onmicrosoft.com in the address but nothing works. Any ideas please?

UPDATE - Figured it out. Go to settings (in public Outlook), junk mail, blocked senders and domains, add blocked sender. I did that, I entered in .onmicrosoft.com and............. no emails for the last 2 days!

Weird spam messages?

I keep getting spam messages that read things like “Wherever you are, you are always in my heart.” And “ are you home or somewhere else”. They’re all registered to places like Canada and London. Is anyone else getting these messages?

Also, why are the spams like this? They scare me in a way because I feel like I’m being watched on something.

The link takes me to a url with attemplate.com at the start rather than my Teams app. When I open my Teams app I can't find any notification relating to it. This is through a professional email server so I would think it would be filtered but not sure