Recognizing Scam Messages: Squirrel’s Guide

Hello, fellow squirrels. Today, I will be opening the nutshell about scam messages I have received and what makes me think they are scams.

There will two different messages that I have received over the months. To protect me from any problems i will be changing the names.

The first one I am going to crack open is an email that I responded to because I was not thinking too much about it, and it went to messages.

First off, looking back at it, I should have checked the email that sent me the message and noticed that it did not belong to anyone. I should not have given them my number. They claimed to be Head Squirrel, but she does not need my number to contact me since I have Teams, and that is normally how I talk to people from the Acorn Plant. Regarding the messages, I realized it was suspicious the way Head Squirrel was talking, and I should have noped out, but not until they messaged me about getting a gift card. Gift cards are the most common way people get scammed out of their money. This one was very clearly a scammer pretending to be Head Squirrel and is something people should look out for when getting random emails. This shows me I need to be better at checking the email of an unknown sender..

The second one is a text message claiming to be from Glassdoor.

The first thing that stood out was it being a group message but only talking to one person. That was the biggest red flag. Second, the numbers they were giving for the posted position seemed too good to be true, which is a common tactic scammers use to get people hooked in. Next was the ending part, if I was recommended, they should have known my age. Lastly, when I looked up the number for Glassdoor, the numbers did not align.

That’s all for today’s cyber-stuffed nutshell! So, remember in this digital forest, we the squirrels need to stay alert and protect our stash, while chipmunks try to sneak in and swipe it when we are not looking.