A Suspicious Message
I rarely get SMS messages, so I’m always suspicious when one hits my mobile. Yesterday's message went like this: “Hi, I’m Laura from Adecco. Would you be interested in a freelance offer, and can I send you more details on that?”
My immediate reaction was to ignore it. But then, pondering a bit, my mind went like this: What if it is a legit offer? I could use money on the side... The name “Adecco” rings a bell… Maybe they found me on LinkedIn, read my profile, went to my page, and saw my phone number in the contact section.
A Walk with Doubt
I took a short walk with the dogs, pondering the above. It wouldn’t leave me easily. Didn’t the stars just tell me the other day that there was an opportunity coming I could take or not? Maybe I was missing something... On the verge of answering the SMS, I hesitated once more. Look up Adecco. Probably a good idea.
I looked them up, and lo and behold, they are an internationally operating temporary employment agency, also located in Hamburg, the city next to my rural existence.
The Truth Unfolds
I decided to call them. The lady I reached sounded professional. “Well yes - we do have a ‘Laura’ working with us - but she is on vacation right now. Pretty unlikely that she contacted you that way.” We chatted a bit more, and it became obvious that the agency wouldn’t have contacted me since we never had business before.
A quick internet search for "job offer SMS freelance fraud" revealed the truth: scammers use women’s names to contact victims via messenger services like WhatsApp and Facebook. Once answered, they offer jobs that include small payments that sum up and are supposed to go into a crypto wallet you have to initiate. You guessed it: the wallets are drained after a while. About 100 million Euros have been squeezed out from thousands of victims all over the world. The job scam is linked to China and cyber slavery networks.
A Close Call
It was easy to see now that I almost fell for a scam message wanting to pull me into their web of fraud. I’m online every single day and familiar with online fraud, so what in the world almost got me into trouble there?
Turns out it’s my old friend, the ego. Am I really that rural, desperately querying writer who falls for one sentence? Well, I haven’t. But the fact that I even thought about it, and went to lengths to find out, sheds light on how these things work.
Lesson Learned
Nobody will go over a page of an unknown writer, look at things, read, and see where the mobile number is to contact randomly with some wonderful offer. It’s just not happening. We can relax, block the number, and delete the message.
We can continue to write, hit publish, meet wonderful people online, maybe even in real life, and go on with our endeavor to share worthwhile snippets of our learnings in life.
Signing Off for the Summer
I will be taking a summer break from writing on Substack and hope to see you back in September. Here’s to wishing you a summer filled with laughter and peace, wonders and freedom. For Life’s Whole Wealth to be discovered.
Here is the article of Euronews with details about the job scam, if you’re interested.