My favorite was Warrant For the Arrest of a Witness in a Civil Action.
There are more things wrong with that phrase than there are words in the phrase.
Bitcoin Bonding Kiosks was a close runner up.
Yeah, that was a weird bit. But subpoenas do have a place in civil proceedings, don’t they? Of course, AFAIK, the poena would tend to be a contempt of court citation at the most, and more likely a summary judgement in favor of the opposing side.
(Disclaimer: my legal training is wholly comprised of what I’ve read in a John Grisham novel, specifically, Playing for Pizza.)
Facebook is being invaded by a bunch of bots posting “talk to Elon Musk” links; each posting the same link, three times, in each post. That’s got to be some sort of scam.
I first encountered, and blocked, them in a thread headed by an AI-generated image, likely posted by yet another bot.
I just got a text saying I owed $3.99 for an outstanding toll from VDOT (Virginia Department of Transportation). Thing is, I’m in Texas and haven’t been in Virginia in 15 years. Also, the phone # the text is from has the country code for Democratic Republic of Congo.
A couple of years ago, I bought gas at the pump with my Valero card in south Texas. There must’ve been a skimmer on the pump, because less than two hours later my account was used to charge $200+ of merchandise at a Valero north of Austin, TX.
Bleeping Computer reports a text scam requesting payments for overdue parking tickets: “…a massive wave of phishing text messages has caused numerous cities throughout the US to issue warnings, including from Annapolis, Boston, Greenwich, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, San Diego, San Francisco, and many others.”
The scammers use a re-direct by google to circumvent Apple’s policy of disabling suspicious links on the iPhone. The scammers sometimes ask for amounts as small as $4, because they are interested in poaching your identifying details and of course your credit card.
As a general rule, if you receive a text from an unknown phone number or email address that is an out-of-the-blue greeting or asks you to click a link, pay a bill, or respond in some manner, you should report and block the number instead.
And as I was reading this I got a text from EZ-Pass saying I owed something. My message app automatically classified it as spam, but it still generates a popup on my computer.
Stupid thing is that it came from a +44 (UK) number. Outsourcing is a thing, but that really makes it look suspicious.
The one I got yesterday included my number as part of a large group text. I guess we all owed the same toll.
I instantly closed the text window and logged into the EZ-PASS site when I got that 2 months ago.
Nope, no extra charges, and actually it is supposed to automatically charge your financial institution as needed, so by definition you would never get a “you owe something” notification unless your card had expired or there weren’t enough funds in your bank account. I made sure to top it off with 20 bucks anyway, just to be safe.
I’ve been getting those “unpaid tolls” texts. The fact that I don’t own a car was my first clue something was amiss.
After averaging 2-4 spam texts a week, I have 6 in the last 3 hours. “Candice” with a job opportunity, a debt collector from CBW BANK, a “this is my new number guess who this is” message, “hey my dear friend,” and two different unpaid tolls.
Me, I keep getting “new electrical service provider” ones, along with one or two stubborn “preapproved” house loans thanks to my applying for one last month.
PayPal scams are getting more ridiculous. Received two within an hour of each other yesterday, both with an impossible “Maple” street address above an “invoice” image.
5399 Maple Way, New York, NY 83460
3285 Maple Ct, Houston, FL 50745
Spent a wonderful morning chatting with a nice woman about a new roof and siding for the building, discussing what materials I would want for the siding and what type of roof would be best and what kind of guarantees each would have and how long they would last (many decades!) etc. Then I told her that the final decision would have to be made by the owner.
“Oh, your wife?”
“No, the management company that owns and runs this five story apartment complex.”
CLICK!!
Maybe putting down the name of my car insurance company on the caller ID wasn’t such a great idea after all?
I didn’t notice the time stamps, but when I checked my email today I had four emails with identical titles about something on my PayPal account. I opened one out of curiosity and it asked me to sign a document verifying a $600+ change to my account, or to call a 8 number if I had any questions about the change. Obviously I tagged all of these as spam.
As with all missives of that nature, I think the best bet is to contact PayPal directly (not using any number given by the potential scammer) and find out what is up.
What I like about them is that they are for a random amount of money, including pennies, which you could never even run up on EZ-Pass (or our California equivalent.)
That’s incorrect; most of the MTA tolls are for an amount not ending in 5¢ or 0¢. The same is true for the PA Turnpike & the MD I-95 express lanes (scroll down)
It’s all handled by a AI chat thingy.
A very stupid one.