骗钱！

最近两个同事接到了“奇怪”的电话。电话的内容几近相似：一个就没见面的老朋友/同学，忽然间打了个电话来。说什么现在在南京，要驾车来上海跟我同事聚一聚。然后第二天，打电话来时说发生车祸了，现在在医院里，需要一笔钱急救（都说是2万人民币）。希望我的同事能帮帮忙，汇钱到他的account去。还好，我的同事都不笨。因为是很久没有联络的老朋友/同学，所以声音时很难辨认的。他们就打电话到其他朋友（或那家人）那里确认。终于确定是一个骗钱的电话。这一种电话还会用其他的故事，譬如说，一个朋友前了巨款，或一个朋友的家里发生了不幸的事等等，各式各样。还有一种就是（我也遇过）发sms给你，说什么是信用卡公司打来的，要你打回去，换密码什么之类的。其实，在Internet上这一种骗钱事情是经常有的。我相信很多人都收过什么Paypal Account有问题需要你点一点attached的URL，或是你的银行发了一封email给你说要换password等等。我们称这为phishing。而现实生活中，phishing就演变成social engineering。我想，大家还是小心点的好，无论是网络上或现实中。

Lately two colleagues of mine have received some very weird phone calls. The content of the phone calls is similar: A long-time-no-see friend called out of the blue, and said he is driving to Shanghai from Nanjing (exactly the same for both of my colleagues), and hope to meet. Then, the next day, the call came again and said he had an accident and was in the hospital. Of course, he needed some money, which is 20,000 RMB (exactly the same amount). He asked to transfer some money to his friend's bank account. Luckily my colleagues called their friends or family of that friend (since it has been a while, they couldn't really recognize the voice) to verify. Of course they confirmed that it was a scam! There are other stories that have been used by this type of phone calls, like family has problem, owe a big bunch of money, etc. And there is another type, which I myself have experienced. I got an sms (well, couple of them actually) saying that my credit card has some problem, and needed me to call the number came with the sms. Basically it asked me to change my password or something. Actually this type of incident always happened on the Internet. I guess most of us have received a lot of spams saying that Paypal account needed us to change some information or our bank needed us to change password (by clicking the link) etc. We normally call this phishing. And, in real life it is actually called social engineering. Basically, we just have to be careful and smart with all these scams. It really happens everywhere here!