Warning on Private Message

[fffred]

Evening fellow AARPers!

I just got a Private Message from LillianW552055. Subject is "Hi Please Stay Safe Am Waiting." I checked the profile, "Lillian" just joined today. No posts to-date.

Well, I think most of us know where this is going. Maybe it's even a well known thing around here and I just never got tagged. I reported the profile to the Admins, they can sort it out.

The message is "With the current situation of isolation and social distancing for this Covid 19 I just want to say hello and please be safe wherever you are and kindly respond i am waiting. lillianwnwindrope@gmail.com"

(since the email shows in public searches I am happy to include it here)

I Googled the email address and it shows up as on a lot of "let's be pals" sites.

I used the Google function to search for instances of the photograph included with the AARP profile (she appears to be much younger than AARP membership). A lot of entries in Portuguese showed up, I figured from Brazil.

Actually, translating the captions on one site with the photo (exact same photo) I got "American banker D..... L....., 33, who accuses Citibank of firing her for "being sexy and getting too much attention"" (I omitted the name). I actually recall that case of Citi firing her, not that I paid any attention to it at the time other than seeing a few headlines about it.

But I post this as an alert to others (probably singles, I am not; I'm happily married). A little detective work can go a long way!

[LydiaN586309]

Boy oh boy!  There is so much fraud and skullduggery going on these days.

Thanks for the warning @fffred.

Lyds

[ManicProgressive]

I rarely get messages, but I got one a few days ago.  Your post prompted me to look through my messages, and sure enough, I have two messages similar to yours!  From a year or so ago.  Completely ignored them.  Since I guess they think I'm a man....and I'm not.  :catwink: 

[Underbat]

Hey all, apologies that this spam got through.

We try to catch it before it gets started, but sometimes we miss.

Please be careful, when you get PM's  like this, and report them to the moderation team