Luke

playing baldur’s gate 3 alone in my bedroom dressed like this for astarion

Scams can happen to anyone! I nearly got caught by one yesterday. I was in the studio, rushed in between recording my two podcasts. I got a Whatsapp call from 'Amazon'. Brain elsewhere, man on phone asked 'had I ordered a new iPhone?' as they had reports of suspected fraud. I said no. He said to cancel he'd sent me a six-digit code to reply to. I was feeling rushed and pressured, as the team needed to record, but finally enough of my brain turned onto the call and alarm bells started. I said I wanted to first check that this call was legit. He got pushy and said if I didn't send the code he wouldn't stop the iPhone being sent. This felt wrong to me... why would he want to risk sending a high value item, if the customer says it wasn't ordered. So while talking & prepping the podcast, I managed to search the telephone number and yes, it was a recognised 'Amazon scam number.' Clearly, had I replied with the code he'd sent he would have then asked for further details and that would've started the data mine. Of course, by answering (not something I normally do to unknown numbers, but did by reflex) I did inadvertently confirm that my number is a real one, so I'll have to cope with that. The real lesson here is how sophisticated and plausible it was. And even though I'm obviously hyper-alert to scams as my face is in half of them, catch someone at the wrong time, when they're not paying attention, and anyone can be caught out!