This is so weird, seeing this. Two years ago, I got a customs notice from FedEx asking to fill in my details. That was just a plain email from __some guy__ at FedEx with a PDF file attached. I wasn't expecting any package.
I wrote to their chatbot (of course, no human assistance) and after some time of "prompt engineering," or what one might call coercing, it finally directed me to a human consultant who confirmed it was indeed not a scam, and that it was indeed their messaging.
I opened the PDF, and it was pre-filled with someone else's data, with blank rectangles placed over fields in a bad attempt at redacting them (you could just move those rectangles around to reveal the underlying data).
The package later turned out to be a surprise from collaborators abroad. Years later, I still feel that scam aftertaste whenever I see the FedEx logo.
lemursage
I wonder how we could describe this so that aging non-technical executives understand.
"It's like your real salesperson showed up in a wrinkled suit smelling of booze, telling me that your product could be seen in the back of an anonymous white van... But only if I first proved I was carrying the asking-price in the form of gift-cards."
Terr_
It reminds me how at work we had to take a course hosted on our domain about how to recognize phishing and a few days later we got an e-mail from outside our domain saying we had to take a course about a different subject on their domain. We got an email from management a week or so later that complained that so few people had completed the new training -- because we all assumed it was a phishing attempt because it was exactly the sort of thing the phishing course talked about!
jhbadger
In a recent example my step-mother, who is constantly getting cloud storage full scam emails, received an email from Google about 75% full storage that appears to be fully valid. However all the links use a domain c.gle and whois c.gle errors with "getaddrinfo(whois.nic.gle): Name or service not known". whois gle however does work. I was not sure of the validity of c.gle myself, my step-mother would have no idea.
kencausey
I swear, the proliferation of random ".xyz" type gTLD is not making things any easier in stopping non tech people from clicking on phishing links. There's so damn many of them. Sure, if they didn't exist people would use phishing domains like "fedex-secure-delivery-approval.com" or something, I suppose...
There is a similar issue with the IRS. If you call the IRS they use a text-to-speech system to generate the voice for their call tree IVR. The problem is, it's a commercially available system that fake call center scammers also use, so they sound identical. It also doesn't help that it sounds fake and scammy, so you can't use that as a signal to avoid the number you're calling, either
mixdup
>Our Australian Communications and Media Authority body (ACMA) recently reported 336M blocked scam SMSs
Australia has mandatory identity verification for getting a SIM card.
The FCC is now proposing [1] to add a rule to require government ID, physical address, and alternative phone number for every phone line in the US.
KYC for phone lines would cause more IDs to be leaked, and more American dollars lost to scammers and fraudsters.
It really doesn't help that after the acquisition of TNT couriers, some bright spark decided to call the Australian arm of FedEx "FedEx Express". That's right, "Federal Express Express".
It's moronic that these big companies can't get their shit together and provide nice links like this:
which could have an explainer landing page before prompting you to visit the grotesque original link.
Walf
I keep getting this message and it might be legit, but I have no idea:
> BlueShieldCA: ANON, you have an important benefits message in your health feed. blueshieldca.customerfeed.com/a/abcd12345 Txt help/stop Msg&DataRatesApply
If I login to BSCA, their messaging section shows nothing. But some threads on the internet make “customerfeed” seem like a real service.
anon7000
Twenty or so years ago I ordered wheels and tires from tire rack dot com and as I was in college had them delivered to my parents house. The FedEx driver proceeded to roll them down the driveway and into my parents siding scraping up my new wheels and causing about 20k in damage to the siding.
comments (10)
I wrote to their chatbot (of course, no human assistance) and after some time of "prompt engineering," or what one might call coercing, it finally directed me to a human consultant who confirmed it was indeed not a scam, and that it was indeed their messaging.
I opened the PDF, and it was pre-filled with someone else's data, with blank rectangles placed over fields in a bad attempt at redacting them (you could just move those rectangles around to reveal the underlying data).
The package later turned out to be a surprise from collaborators abroad. Years later, I still feel that scam aftertaste whenever I see the FedEx logo.
lemursage
"It's like your real salesperson showed up in a wrinkled suit smelling of booze, telling me that your product could be seen in the back of an anonymous white van... But only if I first proved I was carrying the asking-price in the form of gift-cards."
Terr_
jhbadger
kencausey
List of top level domains: https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt
walrus01
mixdup
Australia has mandatory identity verification for getting a SIM card.
The FCC is now proposing [1] to add a rule to require government ID, physical address, and alternative phone number for every phone line in the US.
KYC for phone lines would cause more IDs to be leaked, and more American dollars lost to scammers and fraudsters.
[1] https://www.404media.co/fcc-wants-to-kill-burner-phones-by-f...
Discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48462308
Cider9986
It's moronic that these big companies can't get their shit together and provide nice links like this:
https://fedex.au/duty/abc123
which could have an explainer landing page before prompting you to visit the grotesque original link.
Walf
> BlueShieldCA: ANON, you have an important benefits message in your health feed. blueshieldca.customerfeed.com/a/abcd12345 Txt help/stop Msg&DataRatesApply
If I login to BSCA, their messaging section shows nothing. But some threads on the internet make “customerfeed” seem like a real service.
anon7000
They seem to have improved so much in that time.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
getpokedagain