So … this is awkward. Someone is pretending to be me via email. 
I’ve dealt with Instagram impersonators for years (until I got that blue checkmark — finally!), but this is my first time being impersonated through email.
Someone created a fake address and somehow scraped email addresses of my Instagram followers to send out scammy “exclusive trading opportunity” messages.
The fake emails are coming from paulapant.mail (at) gmail (dot) com, with subject lines like “Exclusive Opportunity: Copy My Trades for Free.”
That’s definitely NOT me — please don’t engage, reply, or click anything if you get one.
Real emails from me always come from [email protected] or [email protected], and they’ll always have an unsubscribe link at the bottom.
What we’re doing about it: We’ve reported this to Google and filed a complaint with the federal government’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. We’re on it.
The silver lining: I texted my 84-year-old dad to warn him about this scam. I fully expected panic or concern. I braced myself for a flurry of questions, possibly a lecture about ‘catching these criminals.’
Instead, I got the most perfectly dad response imaginable:
Peak dad energy right there 😂
Turn this into learning: Since we’re talking about scammers anyway, this might be a good time to mention the podcast interview I did with Dr. Eric Cole, the cybersecurity advisor under President Obama and security advisor to Bill Gates.
We did a deep dive on protecting yourself from scams, and one person told me it was “maybe the most useful video I’ve ever seen.”
Dr. Eric Cole is a former CIA hacker who talks through the most common attacks targeting your money.
We covered bank hacking, which is simpler than most people realize. All criminals need is your account number — printed on every check you write — and your password. With that information, they can often perform electronic fund transfers of up to 50 percent of your account balance without triggering alerts. Yikes.)
We talked about phishing scams, including fake Amazon emails. (Nothing against Amazon, but because they’re so big, they’re frequently spoofed.)
We covered the myriad of ways you could lose the contents of your cryptocurrency wallet. (It’s really the Wild West.)
He told the story of a couple in Ohio — school teachers who dreamed of buying a small farm — that lost their $1.3 million inheritance in a wire transfer scam.
If you want to learn how to protect your assets, watch our interview with Dr. Eric Cole on YouTube or listen to the podcast here.
Dr. Eric Cole talks about Cybersecurity
Meanwhile —
If you get any suspicious emails claiming to be from me, please forward them to [email protected] so we can keep track. Thank you!
