bbb phishing scam

[PaulLovesJamie]

Hopefully I'm the only one who got this, but heads up anyway:

I got an email this morning from the BBB regarding a complaint about my business. It looked legit, but a couple inconsistencies seemed fishy to me so I called the BBB. They actually have a recording answering the phone informing people that there is a phishing scam going on claiming to be the BBB, not to get taken in by it, instructed me to update my antivirus, etc etc etc.

 

[pitzerwm]

I get them all of the time along with UPS/FedEx/DHL. Usually all you need to do is run your cursor over the link and you will see that it doesn't go to the right place.

 

[PaulLovesJamie]

I see them regularly as well, this one was good enough that it almost got me - the email looked like they copied it from a real 'bbb complaint notification', the wording was right, the "from" email address looked right, etc. The attachment was a zipped doc that detailed the complaint... it wasnt until I almost opened the attachment that I realized it was an executable and I thought hang on a minute...

 

[Earl Weiss]

Got contacted from the BBB. It was the real BBB but I still considered it scam.

They said they had people saying good things about me but there were people who wouldn't use me because I was not a BBB member.

So, the pitch went I needed to join so they could tell all these people they could now use me.

 

[pitzerwm]

Earl, that is indeed pathetic. I once was told by a local BBB salesperson that if I didn't join that they would give out "bad" info on me. Needless to say that when I had my lawyer make contact, that person was fired along with the manager.

The BBB is a franchise just like McDonalds. You might not realize it byt the "Union Gospel Mission" is sort of a franchise, they pay for the right to use the name.