Gone Phishing: Network Solutions Phone Scam
Today I got an interesting phone call from a representative of Network Solutions. At least they claimed that is who they were representing. You gotta love these social engineering flavored scams.
The girl on the other end of the phone wanted to inform me that one of my domains is about to expire and then offered me the convenience of renewing over the phone. I am a very skeptical old bird so I told her no thanks and hung up. My grounds for skepticism were well based.
- The first red flag came when she asked if I wanted to renew over the phone. I hate ordering pizza because they want my credit card number. I sure didn’t want to give it to this woman without even the promise of a pizza pie in 15 minutes or less.
- The second thing that bothered me was the ‘Unknown Caller’ on the CallerID. You would think that Network Solutions would have some kind of ID associated with it. The thing is the scammer is just being lazy. Many of the VOIP providers let you change the CallerID that is being displayed.
Every bit of information someone would need is to make this scam is available with a simple whois query. At least if your cheap like me and don’t want to spring the few extra dollars to keep your registrar information private. How hard would it be write a script and harvest this information, compile it in a database, and start up your very own call center. Cast out the line and watch the bobber. Eventually your going to get a bite. Sometimes the bait gets you lots of bites and a few good catches. Makes one think.
I did contact Network Solutions and they said they only call customers if it is a call back and if it has been requested.
