What is the most suspicious e-mail you've ever recieved that was legitimate? | Lobsters

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2024-07-09 22:30:09

We’ve all heard the stories of people falling for phishing schemes. However, I feel like there’s a lot of stories from the reverse direction, where people assumed it was a scam but was actually real. I thought that this community might have some great anecdotes.

The accounting database has crashed and all of our payroll information has been lost. Follow the link below an re-enter all of your personal information.

This e-mail did come from a member of the accounting department, but was a random, low-level employee and not CFO or even a manager. The site it linked to was not our domain and popped up a self-signed certificate warning when accessed. It was then a single page form that asked for my name, address, social security number, and bank routing number.

I took me the better part of a day to find anyone that who could at least confirm that the accounting database had crashed. Most of my colleagues filled it out without a second thought. As promised, the employees who flagged the message as phishing didn’t get paid until late into the next week.