Moneybox

Don’t Be an Idiot Like Me and Fall for This Scam

I feel ridiculous writing about this, because it’s mostly a story of me acting like an idiot, but there may be other gullible people out there, and you do not want to fall for this. Earlier this morning, I went to the Banana Republic website looking to order some jeans. I got a pop-up telling me that I’d been randomly selected as the winner of a promotional gift card. All I had to do to claim my winnings was enter my cellphone number and they’d text me a verification code. So I did, and I got the code, and low and behold there was no gift card.

Now all day I’ve been getting weird telemarketing calls from for-profit colleges and random insurance companies and the like. I must have misstyped the URL and gotten sent to a fake version of the site or something.

Be alert! Or at any rate, don’t be an idiot like me.