Phished. Again | Jeremy Cherfas

Jeremy Cherfas

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23<br>Jul<br>2026

Phished. Again

My defences were down

A podcast I just listened to raised again the thorny issue of blogger’s guilt, and tried to make it seem like nothing, that you are answerable only to yourself, that you can blog at any cadence that suits you. Almost all bloggers, however, know that’s not true. That’s why there are so many blog posts that consist of little more than an apology for not blogging.

As I woke from my nap, I thought I may as well get out of my rut of blogging about only the geekier things in my life. While I was considering possible topics, I got a message on my phone, providing me with a perfect subject.

A courier had tried to deliver a package and nobody had been there to receive it, so it offered me an opportunity to reschedule. As it happens, I am expecting two packages, so it was entirely possible that this was one of them. And I don’t want it to be sent back to China, which they threatened to do on Saturday (Urgent, quick, do something.). So I went off to the website, which certainly looked official (though looking again I should have noticed that the courier company’s name was a subdomain). Having entered my name and confirmed my address (again, with hindsight, a flag; they know my address, they’ve just been there), I rescheduled. At this point I was asked to pay a handling fee of €1.50. Seemed a bit suspicious. I’ve rescheduled before without an extra payment. But what the heck (urgent etc), so I foolishly entered my card details.

Surprise! The card was declined.

I love the fact that when they declined the card, they offered me the chance to use a different one, the scamps.

At this point I belatedly twigged, opened my bank app and blocked the card. A moment later the bank called to say they had noticed suspicious transactions for about €100 and €400. I sheepishly confessed that I had been phished and that I had blocked the card as soon as I had noticed. They were very nice about that, and I will have a new card in a few days.

Some questions

How did the scummers know that I was expecting a delivery? Or maybe they didn’t, but send out so many messages the odds are in their favour. They had a correct phone number, which is slightly worrying, and of course before I gave them my name and address they maybe did not have that connected to me. The companies I bought from already have my credit card details, so if they were going to scam me, they could have done so by now. Maybe they were breached. Maybe there’s even a business model in which a legitimate company sells a product at an attractive price and makes extra money by selling the details on to the scummers. I have no idea, but it seems possible.

How were they set up to use the card so quickly, and for what? This is probably a failure of the imagination on my part. Good software could presumably be sitting there with a list of things to buy, waiting for card details with which to buy them.

This is now the second time I have been phished, both times this year. I guess I am getting old and dull-witted. All kudos to Fineco bank for its swift and impeccable response.

Filed under |<br>General |

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