Family member scammed by Google Rewards malware pop-up. Now what?

[Beartracks]

She had the pop-up that said, like, "you're one of 100 users selected" or somesuch, dangling a free iPad or Netflix subscription, stuff like that. She clicked on through and after giving address, email, and cc #, she got "signed up" and paid $9.95 for what SOUNDS like is going to be a deluge of spam from 10 pages of marketing companies. Oh -- but you can earn reward points if you buy their crap! (Of course.) Apparently the one-by-one opt out option for all those individual companies finally made her think something wasn't legit. (And I'm SURE the opt-out would actually work, right? )

Anyhow, so far I just see the $9.95 transaction pending on her card from something that lists as "STAX *MYSUGARFREEGUM" and an email from NorthPoleGames.net.

What should I expect? What should I do?

Should I walk her through locking her credit card?
Call the bank's fraud dept and try to cancel that transaction?
Get her a new email account and just call it lessons learned?
Prepare for her identify to be stolen?



=================

[vanlassie]

1. Call bank now unless you can do it online.

[Beartracks]

6. But is it fraud if she purposely clicked her way through...

... and provided the info?

As opposed to "I have no idea how this charge got on my card"...

[liberalmuse]

12. Victim blaming.

Please stop. It was trickery, aka "fraud".

[Beartracks]

13. Agreed. I was just being a worrywart re. how the bank would see it...

... but it didn't matter: they reversed the charge. They're even issuing her a new card number.



Now we need to worry about the email...

[liberalmuse]

14. My sincere apologies.

That was my bad but unfortunately is in line with my overall suspicious nature. I sometimes forget there are truly kind and well-intentioned people out there, especially on DU.

I'm a worry wart, too and get sick every time I hear about someone being scammed. It usually doesn't end with a one time charge. Thankfully I saw people in the comments leaving sound advice for the OP. I should have backed out instead of picking on you. i'm so sorry!

[Beartracks]

15. No worries! :) And...

... I *am* the OP!



=========

[Tetrachloride]

2. call bank. get thru that

then report back here. and we make sure on computer techniques

[Beartracks]

3. It was on her iPhone, by the way.

[Tetrachloride]

5. ok. see below for techniques

[Beartracks]

9. Is there a link or something missing in your post?

===========

[Tetrachloride]

10. I posted ideas separately so they appear at the bottom of the thread

[Beartracks]

11. Facepalm....

Sorry! Long day.

==========

[Tetrachloride]

4. A new email is a good idea.

or more than 1. 1 email for bank and monthly bills, one for Amazon.

perhaps delete amazon account and start anew, or just avoid the site.

Simple but effective ways to reduce risk.

[BigmanPigman]

7. I have seen similar ads many times.

I'm not surprised that they are successfully scamming people with this shit.

[Tetrachloride]

8. A separate browser for financial transactions is

reasonable.

On Safari, i have ad blockers and turn javascript off.

I personally dislike financial transactions on phones, even if iPhone.

The main things are that the transaction was caught quickly and that we are aware of safer strategies.