We recently published a press release where we announced some executive changes here at Nucleus. While being named in the press release is an honour, it also came with the unintended side effect of having a target put on my back. I became a target for fraudsters and within one day, the emails and phone calls ramped up immediately.
I’m used to the usual amount of bad spam and phishing attempts, however what I began experiencing was definitely targeted.
Other than the regular phishing attempts increasing, I started receiving emails like this one:
It was a direct attempt to have me respond to my business partner and to stop me from calling him to authenticate that the email was real. Now it is 2018 so I wouldn’t actually call him anyway, however I’d definitely send Martin a Slack message. The email address was enough to identify that this wasn’t actually Martin, also Martin would Slack me, not email me and I know he doesn’t work off of an iPad.
A couple hours later in the day, I received a phone call from someone who said that I had gone into a car dealership looking for a car and they were a service that can do car searches across 20+ dealerships. I asked which dealership he was with and he said they work with a few. He rattled off some names of dealerships I recognized. Now, I’m not in the market for a car, however I did talk to someone at a dealership when I was getting my car serviced a month ago.
He asked me what kind of car I was interested in and we talked about that for a couple minutes (I’d love to go to an electric car, at some point) and then he started asking questions that were frankly, inappropriate for someone helping me look for a car.
The gentleman on the phone asked me for my home and work addresses, employment history, email address, salary and birth date. I kept refusing to give this information and he gave a story that they needed this information to prove that these car searches weren’t fraudulent and that it was in my best interest as the more information they have about me, the better they will be able to help me look for an appropriate vehicle.
The voice on the phone caved on a few items but wouldn’t continue without my birth date. I was in the middle of reiterating that this is information that only the financial institution needs when processing a loan or lease and is not needed for helping me search for a car when he hung up on me.
He had given me a physical address for his location and when I googled it, the dealership at that address didn’t match the name of the company he worked at.
I spoke to the RCMP a few times and had a file opened for it. Because I hadn’t divulged any information, they wouldn’t create a case on it, however they now have a file open in case there are any other complaints.
When I had called the number back of the person that called me, it would play music and then disconnect after about 20 seconds each time. I called the dealership at the address he had given me and they said they didn’t call me.
While it’s not clear how they initially got my cell number and my name, that doesn’t mean they have a legitimate business and it doesn’t mean that they should be instantly trusted.