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!
Your assumption was correct; it was indeed an email barrage. This has become a common tactic among identity thieves; they buy something on your credit card, using all of the correct information for their victim so as not to trigger any alarms. Of course, this includes the victim’s actual email address, so they use email-blasting apps to sign the victim up to many different mailing lists, with the intention of tricking the victim into deleting the one clue that they’re an identity theft victim, with the intention of hanging around her house to swipe it off her porch before she finds it. Absolutely call Samsung to report the fraudulent purchase (hopefully they haven’t shipped it yet, if so keep a very close eye on her incoming parcels to try and find it), and her card issuer for the same reason so she can be issued a new card with a new number.