I hope this is an appropriate place to post this. If not, I apologize.

There's a new phone scam. A robocall tells you that you've been awarded a $63 credit on your Verizon bill. All you have to do is log in to www.vzw63.com with your Verizon username and password to claim it. This is a bogus web site that collects your login credentials, then connects you to the Verizon web site so that it appears legitimate. There is no $63 credit. They're just harvesting your credentials, presumably to order goods or services in your name, etc. If you've fallen for this, I'd suggest immediately going to the legitimate Verizon site and changing your password, then looking for any changes they've made to your account and anything that might have been ordered in your name. Contacting Verizon's fraud department might be wise, too: [email protected].

More information can be found at:

http://www.scambook.com/report/view/280618/WWWvzw63com

Be suspicious of any call asking you to log in to any site the caller specifies.

Sandi

Thanks for the heads up,

another reason not to use Verizon.

River

It doesn't have to be just Verizon. Any company name can be (and has been) used for the scam. We must be constantly aware and alert.

When in doubt - contact the company directly in the normal manner.

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Wed Oct 16, 2013 9:32 pm Thanks for the heads up,

another reason not to use Verizon.

River

I happen to have one cellular telephone that connects through Verizon, and I use it when traveling, such as going to the Erikson Institute Fall Conference, leaving a tad later this morning, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I have found one, and only one, cellular telephone service provider whose system has a serviceable signal in the vicinity of the conference site, Austen Riggs Center, in the Western Massachusetts Berkshires, and that provider is Verizon. So, for safety when I am in the Berkshires, I use Verizon, as I have not found, or heard of, any other cellular telephone service provider whose system works decently there.

Meanwhile, many years ago, as I now recall, Scientific American published an article about aspects of deception, with particular emphasis, as I now recall, on the inherent advantage that tends to accrue to someone who figures out a new way to use deception for a nefarious purpose. Because the new way of using deception is new, there are no in-place defenses against it, perhaps because no defense is necessary for an offense that has never happened.

The predicament for a defender against offenses that have never before occurred is the advantage an offender who came up with a profoundly new offense has. That advantage is simple. The offender need only come up with one way to offend for which there is no existing defense for the offense to, perhaps, be successful; whereas, the defender has to defend against all possible totally new offenses; that makes the task of the defender something akin to absolute impossibility.

If I may concoct an illustration in the form of a perhaps-ridiculous fantasy...

Suppose that an intended offender can come up with a heretofore unknown offense, and can develop and implement it at a cost of $1000 and 1000 hours of work. Suppose that an intended defender against all possible offenses can come up with a defense for any given offense at a cost of $1000 and 1000 hours of work... Suppose, furthermore, that there are a quadrillion (British quadrillion or American quadrillion does not change the outcome significantly, methinks) possible offenses that have never before been implemented. To defend against every possible offense, the defender needs to invest 1000 quadrillion dollars and 1000 quadrillion hours. While, with a fiat currency, the 1000 quadrillion dollars may be an inconsequential triviality, the meeting of the rubber and the road with 1000 quadrillion hours may be bereft of achievable attainment.

Or, the "Verizon 63 dollar credit" scam simply ain't nohow about Verizon; it is about deception and, perhaps, the social construction of reality based upon deception being defined, via mistaken social consensus, as not-deception.

Hence, I am finishing preparations for my "Hi, ho, its off to Riggs I go," exploration of moral injury as the "lifeblood" of addiction and its associated moral injury trauma, whereby I find that, as in the book by Lance Dodes, M.D., the heart of addiction is the psychological defense of displacement.

The enigma of deception is, to me, grievously simple; a person who is deceived cannot be consciously aware of being deceived, as being consciously aware of being deceived is indistinguishable from being not-deceived.

In my view, attributing deception to Verizon, and using that attribution as a reason to not use Verizon, is, for me, indistinguishable from some form of deception. Why? Perhaps because so doing displaces the deception of one or more "not-Verizon" people onto Verizon, which is, for me, a form of attribution error that reminds me of the "fundamental attribution error" of social psychology.

Alas, my view is that of one person, me, and I am always out-numbered.

I sure am glad that we are not beating ourselves to death over the biggest scam going today. midnight...?