How are the scammers getting these details?

[Mikey_Gore]

How is it that for example, if I am expecting a package from DHL, then a scammer sends a fake DHL email. Or if I have recently become a BlueHost member, now I get fake email from people pretending to be BlueHost. I even got a phone call the other day from another company, and it was fake a scam, strange thing is, I did become a customer of said company very recently.

How do they know? How do they get the details.

 

[HardReset]

How is it that for example, if I am expecting a package from DHL, then a scammer sends a fake DHL email. Or if I have recently become a BlueHost member, now I get fake email from people pretending to be BlueHost. I even got a phone call the other day from another company, and it was fake a scam, strange thing is, I did become a customer of said company very recently.

How do they know? How do they get the details.

They don't. How many people are getting package from DHL every day? How many people become BlueHost member every day?

Scammers just bombard gazillion messages and sometimes they hit someone that actually is waiting package etc. Most are misses of course.

 

[Mikey_Gore]

They don't. How many people are getting package from DHL every day? How many people become BlueHost member every day?

Scammers just bombard gazillion messages and sometimes they hit someone that actually is waiting package etc. Most are misses of course.

I know what you mean, however this is not it. What you are saying is when the company's are popular. Like everyone nowadays have a PayPal account, Amazon, or Facebook account, Twitter etc and perhaps BlueHost. But I also have others, some which are not mainstream and unknown by most people. In fact, I think it is impossible for the scammers to have even heard of it.

The phone call scam came literally two days after I registered with the company. So it feels like they have access to my e-mail account. But how is that possible? And how can I be sure?

 

[HardReset]

I know what you mean, however this is not it. What you are saying is when the company's are popular. Like everyone nowadays have a PayPal account, Amazon, or Facebook account, Twitter etc and perhaps BlueHost. But I also have others, some which are not mainstream and unknown by most people. In fact, I think it is impossible for the scammers to have even heard of it.

The phone call scam came literally two days after I registered with the company. So it feels like they have access to my e-mail account. But how is that possible? And how can I be sure?

Again, if they sent gazillion emails or make gazillion phone calls, it's just statistics that sometimes they score a "hit". Most are total misses, with you, they just got lucky.

If they had access to your e-mail, they could do much better (or worse things) than just spamming messages or phone calls.

 

[Micheal George]

Scammers often obtain personal information through various means, a process commonly known as phishing. They might harvest data from public sources, compromised databases, or even through social engineering techniques.

In the examples you've mentioned, they may have accessed publicly available information related to your package tracking or your recent sign-up with a service provider like BlueHost. Additionally, data breaches and leaks from companies can expose customer information, which then becomes a goldmine for scammers.

It's essential to remain cautious, avoid clicking on suspicious links, and verify the authenticity of any communication you receive, especially if it requests sensitive information or actions. Regularly changing passwords and using two-factor authentication can also enhance your online security.

 

[ComputerGuy55]

There is potential that these companies are having their data 'scraped'
What is Data Scraping? (Alterative Read from Cloudflare)

A snippet from the Cloudflare article:
"Contact scraping - a lot of websites contain email addresses and phone numbers in plaintext. By scraping locations like an online employee directory, a scraper is able to aggregate contact details for bulk mailing lists, robo calls, or malicious social engineering attempts. This is one of the primary methods both spammers and scammers use to find new targets."

You may have heard in the news about Facebook back in 2010 with something similar.

My knowledge is extremely limited on this subject, this is an assumption on my end.

 

[captaincranky]

Well Mikey, at the very least this may be a good, (and most likely necessary), time to change your mail password.

Make it a nice long, incomprehensible, one while you're at it.

The newest iterations of Firefox have a password manager built in. I'm not vouching for it mind you. However, I do use it, and it seems to work OK.

Every once in awhile, I get phone calls telling me, "there's a question about your Amazon account", followed by a high dollar charge that, (allegedly), needs to be dealt with. I sometimes pick up the phone and screw with them, sic. "wait I have my computer running, so let me go over and check on it". A click, a long pause, and then a dial tone usually follows.

Now, in your case, if these messages are coming too close in time proximity to something you have actually ordered, or are expecting delivered, it might not just be "coincidence". There does exist the possibility that you might have picked up some kind of malware during one of your "adventures".

I'd suggest a thorough scan of your system drive (C:/), if only to calm your obviously frayed nerves.