Someone Tried to Pay Rent With My Credit Card

Painful lessons learned from being duped by a phishing scheme.

Made by the author on Canva

It was a Tuesday morning when I received the message telling me I need to sign a DHL shipment. I’ve been doing some online shopping the previous days, and therefore I didn’t find it weird that I received a DHL shipment SMS.

Furthermore, that message arrived into the same thread I previously received real DHL notices on past shipments. Another valuable factor to lower my alarm.

So, thinking that because I’m in America and have shipped to an American address (my brother’s), I’m dealing with the English branch of DHL. I didn’t have any previous experience with DHL aside from Hebrew.

So I’m filling out the form, putting my credit card to pay 1.99 dollars, and then, before I can “confirm” the payment, I need to wait for an SMS that the credit card company will deliver to the phone number associated with my credit card.

That SMS never came.

I did have some problems receiving SMS over my Israeli phone number here in Austin, Texas, so I didn’t find it weird.

I told myself to figure it out later, and maybe I should call DHL, but I left it at that.