Irwan Hendra's Random Codes Blog

Lately I had been receiving several calls from people who claimed that they were from the not for profit organisations that I had donated to in the past. The intention of the calls were quite clear: they thanked me for my past donations and wondered if I would like to donate more. One thing that I found odd was the smell of desperation that I sensed by just chatting with them. Here is a grossly summarised conversation between me and a particular caller claiming to be from UNICEF: Caller: Hi this is XXXXX from UNICEF, may I speak with Irwan? Me: This is Irwan, how are you? ... ... Caller: We would like to thank you for your very generous past contribution ( as far as I recalled, I only ever donated $50 to UNICEF ) ... ... ... Caller: Do you know that XXXXX country is having XXXXX issue at the moment and require urgent supports, would you be able to do once off donation of $100 ? Me: Sorry I would like to donate but I am not in the position to commit at the moment ... ...

Background As our digital world has become more and more advanced, unfortunately so is the dark side of the digital world. New ways to con unknowing people such as ransom-ware virus and spear phishing are rampant. Even the good old scam has become more elaborated, just few days back I saw a security camera recording on ATM machine showing how two seemingly random strangers actually work together to swap a debit card and get pin code from the victim separately.  In this article I am going to discuss another  very common and can be highly elaborated and realistic Facebook scam. If you are interested with the ATM machine scam that I talked about, I have linked the video at the end of this article Facebook Scam Most of the Facebook scammers have a common goal: either to scam you for your money or blackmail you in anyway they can. Lately, the scam has become so much more elaborated and realistic that you could not tell whether the person is a scammer or genuine person. ...