So … that is awkward. Somebody is pretending to be me by way of e mail.
I’ve handled Instagram impersonators for years (till I obtained that blue checkmark — lastly!), however that is my first time being impersonated by way of e mail.
Somebody created a faux deal with and one way or the other scraped e mail addresses of my Instagram followers to ship out scammy “unique buying and selling alternative” messages.
The faux emails are coming from paulapant.mail (at) gmail (dot) com, with topic strains like “Unique Alternative: Copy My Trades for Free.”
That’s positively NOT me — please don’t interact, reply, or click on something should you get one.
Actual emails from me all the time come from paula@affordanything.com or support@affordanything.com, and so they’ll all the time have an unsubscribe hyperlink on the backside.
What we’re doing about it: We’ve reported this to Google and filed a criticism with the federal authorities’s Web Crime Criticism Heart. We’re on it.
The silver lining: I texted my 84-year-old dad to warn him about this rip-off. I absolutely anticipated panic or concern. I braced myself for a flurry of questions, presumably a lecture about ‘catching these criminals.’
As a substitute, I obtained probably the most completely dad response possible:
Peak dad power proper there 
Flip this into studying: Since we’re speaking about scammers anyway, this is likely to be a great time to say the podcast interview I did with Dr. Eric Cole, the cybersecurity advisor underneath President Obama and safety advisor to Invoice Gates.
We did a deep dive on defending your self from scams, and one individual advised me it was “perhaps probably the most helpful video I’ve ever seen.”
Dr. Eric Cole is a former CIA hacker who talks by way of the most typical assaults focusing on your cash.
We coated financial institution hacking, which is easier than most individuals understand. All criminals want is your account quantity — printed on each examine you write — and your password. With that info, they will usually carry out digital fund transfers of as much as 50 p.c of your account steadiness with out triggering alerts. Yikes.)
We talked about phishing scams, together with faux Amazon emails. (Nothing towards Amazon, however as a result of they’re so huge, they’re regularly spoofed.)
We coated the myriad of how you can lose the contents of your cryptocurrency pockets. (It’s actually the Wild West.)
He advised the story of a pair in Ohio — faculty academics who dreamed of shopping for a small farm — that misplaced their $1.3 million inheritance in a wire switch rip-off.
If you wish to learn to shield your belongings, watch our interview with Dr. Eric Cole on YouTube or hearken to the podcast here.
Dr. Eric Cole talks about Cybersecurity
In the meantime —
In the event you get any suspicious emails claiming to be from me, please ahead them to support@affordanything.com so we are able to hold observe. Thanks!
