Click this link / phone this number if this transaction wasn't you

whatwasmyname

Subject title. I imagine most of us here have had at least one of these texts / emails / phone calls over the years. Scams and we just ignore them.

What concerns me is my mother seems to get an alarmingly high amount of this kind of stuff and also spam in general. I've not kept tally but I think she's had a few texts, she's had a lot of emails and recently she's had a phone call. The phone call to her landline was your card has been used for a few hundred quid transaction and also a transaction over a grand on Amazon, press 1 if this wasn't you. Thing is they never said which bank they were.

I've drummed it in to her never to click any links or press any buttons when these scams come through so she doesn't. She always contacts me. She knows that if something says she needs to reset her password or some account has been compromised (let's say Amazon, PayPal or eBay for example) then she knows not to click through the link but to open up a new browser and go to that site directly to see if it really is asking for a new password. Some times it actually is but 99% of the time it's not.

She only access the internet via her iPad. She may do a bit on her iPhone, i'm not sure about that one but it'll be nothing outside of those two devices.

As far as her bank accounts go, she does none of that on her devices. She's extremely green online and worries about making a costly error so if anything is required to be done as far as online banking goes then she asks me to do that - which will be on my PC.

Now I don't get anywhere near the level of spam and scam contact that she does and I'll have been on let's say shadier websites than she will have been. I wouldn't even say I get a lot. I could count on 1 hand the number of scams I get in a year I would say and my gmail account handles spam emails quite well so very very few actually make it to my inbox. Hers seems full of it.

Just seems quite bizarre to me and wondered if anyone could offer an explanation or a solution to cut it down?

Farway

You infer she uses G mail, does she or is there another one in use?

Asking because like you none of this type of stuff ever makes it to my G mail inbox either

Could she perhaps get another Gmail account and leave the spammed one behind?

whatwasmyname

Yes it's certainly possible that she could leave her email behind though I think she would probably rather persist with dealing with all this kind of stuff vs trying to remember a new account & switching over any other accounts that require an email address to function - as silly as that sounds.

As for whether she has another email address on the go, no she actually only has the one. 

For the client she uses it's the in built mail app on the iPad / iPhone (and not the actual Gmail app).

400ixl

Try checking to see if any accounts have been breached using that email address at https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Could well be that the email address is on a lot of the lists the spammers use to bulk send email.

Slithery

Has she ever fallen for one of these scams (or even just rung back without actually being ripped-off)?

The scammers keep databases of who has ever replied and share them around as a list of 'good leads'.

whatwasmyname

400ixl said:

Try checking to see if any accounts have been breached using that email address at https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Could well be that the email address is on a lot of the lists the spammers use to bulk send email.

Thanks for that link.

Says she's been in 3 breaches. 

Funnily though, one of my accounts has been in 7 - and I do get a lot of spam to it but my spam folder handles it very well.

Another 3 accounts I have, 1 of which I use on any questionable websites, are listed as no breaches. 

Brie

Does she look at a lot of ads on the devices?  Or downloaded any games?  We had a spate of spam once after doing this on our pc.  

Is she marking the spam as such when it's received?  Or marking it as phishing?  I don't know if this actually helps but it might.  If nothing else it's a good reminder to her.

I get a heck of a lot of spam and try to be vigilant about blocking.  I suspect that scammers only use a particular email address a couple of times before changing a digit in the name and starting all over.  I also get a huge influx if I use a different pc - particularly if when visiting my mom overseas and use hers.  

I am constantly bemused though why I get so many texts/emails in Dutch.  Someone obviously thinks I'm fluent.

whatwasmyname

Brie said:

Does she look at a lot of ads on the devices?  Or downloaded any games?  We had a spate of spam once after doing this on our pc.  

Is she marking the spam as such when it's received?  Or marking it as phishing?  I don't know if this actually helps but it might.  If nothing else it's a good reminder to her.

I get a heck of a lot of spam and try to be vigilant about blocking.  I suspect that scammers only use a particular email address a couple of times before changing a digit in the name and starting all over.  I also get a huge influx if I use a different pc - particularly if when visiting my mom overseas and use hers.  

I am constantly bemused though why I get so many texts/emails in Dutch.  Someone obviously thinks I'm fluent.

Ads I would say yes via games.

She had that Candy Crush on there for a long while. Maybe still is. You'd hear the flipping thing making all these noises when it wasn't in use which I suspect was just notifications for it.There were other similar type games on there too.

As for is she marking it as spam - highly doubtful.

The medical ID thread I made, I sent her and my sister a link to the iPhone version, how to do it etc. My sister replied no problem she just needed to update it.
My mother responded how does she do it.
To which I replied the video shows you precisely step by step how to do it. Literally step by step with absolutely nothing missed out.

It was at this point I knew that technology and my mother is like water & oil. It just isn't going to happen.