DISCLAIMER: This post is meant to spread awareness of how elaborate scams can be now, and is not intended to implicate other ozbargainers or Western Digital (WD) in general
So the chronological order of the story of how I got scammed is as follows: -
Bought a WD HDD during the Amazon prime day sale as per this link https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/572428/
After receiving the HDD last week, I followed the recommendation of other ozbargainers to request for an AU plug via their support site as per this link https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/567041
WD requested for my address, phone and S/N of the HDD. I provided the details to them via the support site. They responded yesterday (Tuesday) that they will be fulfilling my request and I will receive the AU plug within 12-15 days. Everything looking good so far! Little did I know…
Today (Wednesday), I got a call from a "Western Digital Representative". This guy knew my name, had details that I was requesting for an AU plug and even identified himself as the name of guy from WD who has been emailing me.
He told me that due to covid19, shipping for the AU plug part is expensive versus his alternative solution, which is to credit 25 AUD into a credit card to purchase the part myself. He mentioned that he will have to charge 1 USD to verify that the card works to process the refund.
At this point, alarm bells should be ringing now but since he knew the details of the ticket I had raised to obtain the AU plug part, I did not suspect a thing and provided him with the details of my first credit card. It got rejected and he said he will check their system again and will come back to me after 15 mins
On his second attempt, he requested for another credit card to try, and foolishly I provided him with the details of my second credit card. This time I got the SMS notification code to authorize the transaction and after like a couple of attempts it still "failed" according to him. He said he will try an alternative solution like sending a cheque and will get back to me in 48 hours.
A couple of hours after this call, my bank called to inform me there have been a couple of suspicious transactions in Bangalore for my credit card, and asked if I had approved it. After checking the transaction that it amounted to a couple of thousand of AUD (instead of the 1 USD), I realized it was a scam and proceed to cancel all my affected cards and initiated a dispute claim with my credit card providers. The bank also told me there have been multiple attempts to purchase more things via my credit card but fortunately (or unfortunately) only one went through.
I immediately called WD via their support line to check if I had inadvertently used a phishing site and provided details to a scam group. WD verified that they do indeed have such a ticket number and my account details in their system. I raised this incident with them and they mentioned they will investigate though I am not exactly hopeful I will get my money back at this point.
So yeah the moral of the story and TLDR version is, NEVER EVER provide credit card information to anyone via the phone even if it means you will be losing out on a purchase (which nearly happened to me when I was buying a Dell monitor and they stuffed up. I had to purchase it via the phone by providing my credit card details)
I am still baffled how the information got leaked out to this "Western Digital representative" because last I checked: -
- I have not installed anything for the past couple of weeks on my computer. Scanned my machine today multiple times and with various online scanners like from ESET and Kaspersky with no viruses or malware
- I have performed multiple transactions or purchases over the past couple of weeks (hey there were a lot of sales!) with no issues or credit card being compromised
The only few reasons I can think of is my machine is indeed compromised, or the WD side of things has been compromised, or it is an inside job. Maybe some ozbargainers here can enlighten me
It was a long post but I hope it serves as a lesson to many here about how elaborate scam calls can be nowadays and we need to be even more vigilant than ever!
Thanks for sharing your story - Since you've taken the effort to post about it, I'd recommend reporting it too
https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/report