Last weekend, I received two emails within about 24 hours from two different senders.
Both senders included some very pertinent, credible information about my very old mother that led me initially to believe these emails could be genuine. Some of the information contained details, I wondered where the attacker got them from. Brief background: I do not have a very close contact with my mother.
Both emails claimed something about the health of my mother. The first one claimed she was not doing well, while the second claimed she was OK. So the attackers tried it both ways.
Both emails asked me to dial a mobile phone number to contact my mother. The phone number was the same in both emails. However, I did not recognize the phone number. Either the phone number was phony or did my mother forget to provide me with this particular phone number.
The first email pretended to be sent by a PhD and it was kept kind of informal. However, Germans tend to be obedient to authority. It could have been the primary care physician of my mother (whom I do not know). Nevertheless, I asked the sender about the sender's connection to my mother, but I never received a reply.
The sender of the second email claimed to be a close neighbor of my mother and that my mother was fine, but she was currently not able to respond to my emails due to some technical issues. So I asked the sender, where exactly does my mother reside to which the sender responded with the correct address. Upon this confirmation, I asked the sender to stop by my mother when the sender gets a chance and say hello for me. Soon after, I received another email from the same sender telling me he had just visited my mother. Well, this rang an alarm bell. Who would visit a very old lady at or even after 9 PM on a Sunday evening? Some other information in that same, second email also seemed plausible, but were fishy.
Of course, I reported both emails to Google Gmail as a phishing attempt. Never heard back from them.
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