My mom just called me in a panic because she suddenly has hundreds of emails in her inbox signing her up for various websites. These are for businesses all over the world, and the usernames used to sign up are inconsistent (Wayne Anaed, Michael Vek, etc). Buried among these emails is a receipt for a new Samsung laptop. I am not sure if that’s real, but I’m inclined to believe it is because the billing address and last four digits of her credit card are correct. We are trying to confirm if that’s a real order directly with the vendor.
I am just hoping someone can help me understand what this scam is so I know what we need to do to protect her. Is all this just designed to bury the confirmation email for the laptop amid a sea of spam so that hopefully she wouldn’t notice the credit card theft? Should we simply delete all these account registration emails? Mark them as spam? Block the sender? She has gmail if that matters. Thanks in advance for the help!
The scammers are spamming her inbox with junk in order to hide the legitimate email (the laptop receipt that you found).
She needs to contact her bank’s fraud department and report this. Cancel the compromised card and get a new one. Also go through all the spam to find any other legitimate emails (i.e. anything with her payment details), and act on them accordingly (i.e. cancel order, refund, etc.).
Looks like her card details were compromised and the spammers are trying to get away with making a few big ticket purchases without her noticing til it’s too late. It’s unlikely that her email account is also compromised, otherwise they wouldn’t be so worried about burying the purchases they’re making under a mountain of irrelevant spam.