Here we have another wonderful anti-scammer video by our friend Jim Browning. This video demonstrates another refund scam in progress, with Jim all the while watching from behind the scenes.
In this case, we have a situation where somehow a scammer has convinced the victim that he is entitled to some kind of refund and after remotely connecting to the victim’s computer has them log into their bank account. You will notice this is basically the same as the previous set of videos by Jim which we covered, give or take a few things.
The chain of events plays out like you would expect if you saw the previous videos. Since the victim is on a Macintosh computer with a built-in display, the scammers use the screen dimming feature of MacOS to blank out the screen “as part of the refund process.” This is actually, of course, to hide their real actions, which are to quickly edit the HTML of the displayed page as a part of trying to trick the victim into thinking they (the victim) introduced an error in the refund amount (typing the wrong value) and that they must return to the scammers the difference.
Yep. It’s that kind of a scam.
Of course, this is all a lie and the values being presented and “refunded” are calculated out from the bank balance of the victim so that, if they fall for the scam, they will transfer just shy of their entire bank balance to the scammers.
If this sounds absurd, that’s because it is – sadly though people do fall for it, which is why these types of scams seem to be becoming quite a bit common. They wouldn’t go to this much effort if it wasn’t at least a somewhat successful method, right?
Anyway, as far as the video goes Jim does what he can to cause problems and outright piss off the scammer, to pretty good effect. By the end of it, the scammer gets frustrated enough to hold the victim’s bank account hostage via more HTML editing. It’s a bluff, of course, but situations like this could cause enough panic in some people to make them pay out. The thread of having your bank account emptied is quite a powerful thing, but it’s really screwed up how they originally cannot “get this money back” but they can somehow wipe out a person’s account. Really great consistency there, right?
What amazes me about these types of scams really is that with things as automated as they are that the tactics used actually work – you wouldn’t think people would fall for these very odd and drawn out methods, but they do, and that’s just sad. That’s why we need more people like Jim to help show these scams for what they actually are.
Anyway, on to the video itself. Enjoy.
I’m very entertained, not by the scammers but the explicatory approach to your videos. I’m learning much about software and thrilled by your approach to counter-espionage. Well Done!
Ah, thank you, but these are not my videos – no no, I’m not Jim, who makes the videos, merely a fan of his work who likes to share them and write about the videos for whatever they may be worth to others. If you find the time do send him some appreciation in the comments on his videos directly 😀
I do hope to cover more of his recent work, much as I did with the the bank login scam series and I hope you will stop by to enjoy what comments I have to provide on that and future anti-scammer awareness efforts!