Tuesday 7 March 2017

Friend or Foe



OK, I'm going to feel really silly if this person turns out to be legit, but I was looking for some shoes when someone asked me to fill in a survey about learning languages. I did, and she said they were running language learning groups nearby, including French and Mandarin, which I thought would be good to go to. She said they needed my number to contact me later when the classes started up.

It was only after I walked away that I thought maybe it was a scam. And now the scammers have my phone number and first name (but thankfully not my last name).

I don't know, this string of messages seems a bit weird. Sometimes it seems legit, but then the last question about being a citizen really struck me as odd. I can't imagine someone personally messaging every person who responded to the survey, surely they'd have something automated to do that. I also think it's weird that she asked if I had plans for the weekend, rather than just saying anything specific about the classes.

I wanted to be polite, and not write her off completely, but the last question just made me feel completely uncomfortable, and I think I'm just not going to respond anymore.

I probably shouldn't have even responded in the first place! Though I thought maybe Auto would be interested in going to a Korean class with me, and we could suss out whether it's a scam together, but my next thought was that I was involving someone else and potentially causing them to get scammed, too!

Anyway, lesson learned - don't give your phone number out to strangers!

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