Dolores Bauer is probably a nice, sweet lady, but cybercrooks have decided to turn her into a scammy witch.
Don't know her, you say? Well, she apparently knows you!
You may have – or will – receive a "special invitation from Dolores Bauer" in your email inbox. It may be tempting ("Oh, I wonder if that's Dolores from my high school class"), but for heaven's sake, don't touch it. Why? Because there is no "Dolores Bauer" as a "she"; only "Dolores Bauer" as a "they" – the scammer kind of "they."
Because if you do, things could go bad
What you see below is not Punchbowl's actual website. It's a fake landing page designed to look like a legitimate invitation service.
Click on it and the danger begins
The "open your invitation" button is where the danger begins — phishing form, malware download, or data harvest – and none of those will make your day bright and cheery.
More smart scammers more often
This is an interesting time for Seniors and scammers. Scammers are trying new techniques that are very convincing – even for the savviest of people.
There are telltale signs, but these are harder to detect that the garden variety. For instance, this example uses ".de" (a German domain) with a misspelled word ("vitaciony" isn't real English or German).
Red flags to watch for
- Sent to you as a bcc, not directly to you
- Sent from a name you probably don't know intimately
- Comes from a sender you don't recognize
- Urgency without details ("Please join us!" but no event info)
- URL doesn't match the legitimate service's domain
- Misspelled or foreign domains (.de, .ru, odd letter combos)
Gary P Guthrie
