Never click the link means... NEVER CLICK THE LINK!
Well this morning started off with a mild heart attack, lol. I did the one thing I know WELL not to do… I clicked a link in an email!!!!! What the hell Jayne, lol! In my defence, I had yet to wipe the sleep out of my eyes as I de-armed the house and ushered the dog to go do his early morning business outside. I stood waiting for him and opened my email which presented me with a sale notification from Etsy.
Without full processing power being initiated, I clicked the link at the bottom which said “view the transaction”. A chrome window opened with a message that went something along the lines of “oops”. The second I saw that, my brain decided to wake up and I went back to the email to check the address it came from… “3294854989rrh584087t34@” was about as far as I got in mentally processing the address… I had seen enough and was now having a mini internal meltdown, as the dog came back inside, I re-armed the house and made my way back to the bedroom declaring “for fnck sakes” haha!
This is not the way ANYBODY wants to start their day… EVER! Haha! And it is crazy how quickly your mind starts scrambling to protect whatever “things” you have linked to that email address and the chrome account - which is, well… EVERYTHING, stupidly… as human does, right - despite knowing the risks.
I logged out of my gmail on my phone, cleared the chrome history on my phone, ran an internal KNOX scan and then turned all internet connections off on my phone - all this was done at the speed of light, lol. I then went to my laptop, cleared the chrome history and logged out of everything there too. I then changed that email password and added extra two factor security just for shits and giggles… Then I went back to my phone, activated the internet and purchased Avast antivirus for my phone, scanned the phone, got rid of one bit of malware (apparently) and then re-logged in to that email account with the new password.
So that was how the day started. After attempting to run some of the “freak out” away on the treadmill and failing hopelessly, I did my morning cold plunge, showered and got on with my morning. Coffee in hand (finally), I sat down and opened my shop via Etsy directly… and there it was - the sale. It was there.
“Hang on a second” I thought to myself… went back to the email that I had to promptly “labelled as spam” and double checked the address with a slightly calmer state of mind.
It was legitimate, haha!!!!! Yes, full of numbers and letters before the @ but it was 100% from Etsy, but seeing that address being half asleep and trying to deal with the dog as well, I went into full panic and rescue mode. Not funny in the moment but definitely giggle worthy now.
I am not an idiot with my online stuff, and I do have double and some triple layers of security on most things, but when something like that happens - it does tend to make you feel like whatever you have is not enough. Also, I have been scammed like that once before and I lost 1500 zar (actually, I unknowingly donated it to the crook, lol) and then not long after they stole about 40k ZAR from my Metamask.
Also not a good day. It was as I entered the world of NFT’s. I made 11 sales in one day which is what totaled at that value! I was absolutely over the moon because I needed that break in life so badly at the time! That all happened in the early afternoon - by the end of the day they had drained every cent of Eth out. And how they did it… was so damn slimy too!
At the time, I had applied to become an artist on the Foundation.app platform. It was all very exclusive and by invite only. When you go through the official application process, they make you verify at least one of your socials. I am mostly on X (or Twitter at the time) so it sends out a tweet from your account saying “I have just joined Foundation.app”. That - THAT right there is how the scammers get in! They obviously scout about on X for those tweets and then they know that person has applied to become an artist on the foundation platform so they are anticipating or HOPING rather, for an email from Foundation.
They put together a professional looking mail with headers, footers and all the other necessary - and send it out to you congratulating you on your acceptance! I got the email and was bouncing around with excitement like a lunatic (precisely what they are banking on)... I did not even think twice to click the button that said it would take me through the “account completion” process haha!
Then I was told that I had to make a payment to activate my wallet on Foundation. This was not unusual to me because Opensea did this too. I paid it and through doing so, I gave them access to my metamask as well as all of my money.
How? Well, it’s pretty crazy really - and I would never have known this, I only found it out after extensive reading… but when you have chrome open and then unlock your wallet extension - your wallet is on FULL view to anything or anyone “lurking” in the background of that active tab. Logical really, but not something I would have thought of.
That was a brutal learning experience as I had to open a new opensea account, re-mint and then transfer ALL the art NFT’s which had just been bought by those 11 people… and anyone who knows anything about Eth… knows just how brutal the gas fees are, so that TOO cost me dearly.
But, here I am - today, making the same damn mistake! It is so easy to act without thinking, and though today turned out to be a false alarm… it may not have been, so an acute reminder that NEVER click a link until you KNOW where it is coming from and that it is safe - or better yet, go directly to the source website and log in there if possible… like I did, AFTER the fact haha!
Anyhoo… live and learn (again)!
Happy Thursday peeps!
Stay vigilant and DON'T CLICK THE LINK!!!
❤❤❤
Until next time...
Much Love from Country Bumpkinland, South Africa xxx
Jaynielea
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I know that feeling, it's been many years since a virus took over my PC. It became completely impossible to start it up again. I took out the hard drive, put it in an adapter to be able to read the files and extracted pictures and documents before formatting the hard drive.
Your post deserves more publicity so I've pinned it in wox
Interesting story
Cuando sea un link mío, no te preocupes...
Never click the link, Jayne. Never.
Methinks we all fall for some of these things, now and then. I have, a couple of times. Once, I was suddenly buying lots of escort services in Amsterdam. The other my bank incepted and wanted to confirm that I was actually in Atlantic City and about to charge $3,000 for hotel rooms.
But congratulations on making the sale!
xo