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I Got Phished Out Today By a Fake GCash Notification

It didn't help that I had a bad night of aching muscles and earache. I woke up in the morning finding an email from "GCash" which looked legitimate. What happened was that I lost some money in my GCash wallet. Fortunately, it wasn't my life savings compared to the loss of Tong Zou--a Chinese-Canadian who lost it all during the rise of Quadriga-CX. I won't disclose any amount of money in my personal accounts for confidential reasons. What I'm going to write right now is a warning. Granted, I'm not tech-savvy so I wasn't too aware of phishing. I did reject a couple of phishing such as those too good to be true employment. 

However, I wasn't so wise today and ended up "verifying" my account and lost the money I put in the GCash wallet set aside to pay for groceries. The official GCash site or the application is where transactions should be done. I even forgot that the MPIN and the OTP should be kept personal. I had to change my MPIN because of that. Besides, what was even worse was that I failed to see the anatomy was that while it looked legitimate--the email wasn't. That's what I failed to consider during the time I was emotionally and physically tired. I should've taken rest days when I should've. 

This is the sad reality we need to face. Some of my peers (I won't disclose their names) were scammed too. There's always the fear of temporary maintenance and the like. Obviously, what scammers do is appeal to emotions. How I lost money last 2012 was because the scammer appealed to my emotions. After some time, I fell to it (again) after I woke up feeling so bad. I tend to forget the warning not to do any important transactions when not in the mood. It's like don't drive when you're too angry or drunk. I tried having a car accident near one of my favorite restaurants because I felt so bad. 

What I did was screenshot the transaction. The number where the money was sent was there. There are some financial institution employees that want to feed their own pockets. You can compare them to extortioners at the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). If dishonest tax mappers should be reported then so should employees who are like that. Then again, some people have targeted even the nobody officers who aren't megastars in the financial world. It seems these phishers will target anyone who has money even if the person isn't a billionaire. A wrong assumption I had was that because I wasn't a big-time rich guy I wouldn't be targeted. I tend to make that assumption way too many times. Today was indeed a hard lesson. Even a friend of mine who was a "low-level worker" was even targeted--she was someone who's struggling financially yet she was even targeted. These phishers are as heartless as robbers who would even rob the barely-earning working class!

Like Tong Zou in the documentary Trust No One: Hunt for the Crypto King--I'm here to send a warning since some people are still unaware. Just because I'm an MBA graduate doesn't mean I'm invincible. I tend to think my graduate degree makes me better. It doesn't if I just use it as a shield against criticism. In fact, some people who got scammed by Ponzi schemes were MBA students too. The cybercrime world is a very deep and dark world. Cryptocurrency is something that might sooner or later appeal to some who rejected it. I had to unsubscribe from some financial channels because of their recommendation of cryptocurrency. This no is no different--a scam is a scam. 

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