Beware of Dropbox Phishing Attempt
As Realtors we are definitely used to receive our share of dubious email scams promising us the moon and the stars in exchange for some small "favor" on our part. These are easy to recognize and usually dismissed and deleted quickly.
It seems though that the phishers and scammers are beginning to change their tactics and beginning to employ more realistic approaches. The one that I am describing below is a two-step approach.
The other day, I received the following lead notification through ActiveRain that seemed fairly legitimate:
You've received a contact message from your Contact Form on the ActiveRain network.
Message details:
From: Kelly
Email: kelly.fisher17@aol.com
Phone: 478-253-xxxx Note: I x'd out the phone number, I doubt it's "Kelly's"
Reply_to: kelly.fisher17@aol.com
Subject: Home search
Hello
I am Kelly fisher looking to buy home in Florida,also i am a first time buyer so i will need an agent to guide me on what to do,Please email only because i have problem
with hearing on phone.
Thank you,
Kelly
Although I didn't think that the message was very sophisticated, I felt it possible that this could be a first-time home buyer who needed some help so I wrote back a courtesy email asking a few basic questions regarding the area (county, city) the buyer is interested in, financing plans, and whether she had contacted her bank or a mortgage broker to determined what price range she would be looking in.
I didn't get a response right away so I already dismissed this as not going anywhere when the next email from "Kelly" hit my inbox:
Hope all is going well with you, I have been busy with work,I would be more than happy to work with you in acquiring this property, I have other properties I've looked at and saw similar pictures of houses I'm interested in. If you send me a list of the other homes that you have available, I can make a choice and also I saw a similar home I'm interested in here in Florida and would love you to take a look at it,also my price range is from 1,300.000.00 to 2,500.000.00. Here is the link to the home I saw and Interested in buying on Trulia home page attach with prove of fund and i am a cash buyer, you can take a look at it by click and logging into the Dropbox image gallery
Let me know if we can get similar home like this.
Looking forward to your response,
Regards
kelly.fisher17@aol.com
Now what's wrong with this aside from the vagueness, horrible spelling, grammar, and anyway, what kind of price range is that? I still can't figure out what those numbers are supposed to be. But I digress.
For the purpose of this post, the above link is disabled but it did go to what appeared to be the sign-in page for dropbox as well as ways to log in with numerous email services and social media sites.
Although I know I should probably not have clicked on the link in the first place, I did because after all, it's not all that unusual that a buyer will send a link with property information. However, when I didn't see the expected listing information, that is where this stopped for me.
Why would a "buyer" send a link that then will only go to another site requiring my login information?
A Google search on dropbox and phishing resulted in quite a bit of information about this phishing scam that's apparently been going on for a while under various other pretenses. Basically, the phishers create fake pages, storing them on Dropbox, and directing you to them. I do think that the "home search" approach is a new one and obviously designed to target Realtors.
I forwarded the entire thing to abuse@dropbox.com and if you should have received similar emails like I did, you should do the same. Whatever you, just don't log into the fake Dropbox!
Beware of Dropbox Phishing Attempt!
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