Welcome to this week’s edition of the Threat Source newsletter.
Up until last week, I had never considered the timing of a scam to be important. I’m so used to just swiping away emails or text messages at random times during the day that I’d never considered what would happen if an adversary happened to get me at just the right time.
That’s what happened to my wife last week.
We were on vacation, and I was away for a few hours at lunch with my friends while she and the other spouses stayed back with our children to hang out at the pool for a bit.
She received a text message from an unknown number asking her to confirm a Zelle payment to someone she had never heard of for a not-insignificant amount of money. Not even a minute later, she received a call from the same number from someone claiming to represent our bank asking if the transaction was fraudulent and if could she provide some personal information to verify the transaction or cancel it.
In most cases, she probably would have put them on hold and Googled the number to see if it was legitimate or logged into her online account to view her recent transactions. The problem was this scammer had hit her at the worst possible time. It was right in the middle of a diaper change for our 10-month-old daughter, and she was trying to change our daughter out of a wet bathing suit and stop her from crying because they were just a few minutes away from naptime.
Already in a panic (and not to mention exhausted from the heat at the beach), she answered the phone ca ..
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