Captcha: Newish Scam Alert
Monday, June 2, 2025
Captcha: Newish Scam Alert
Be cautious with Captcha verification pages: It looks like an innovative new way for scammers to trick users into installing malware or giving away important user names and passwords.
If you get such a popup or dialog box on run-of-the-mill websites, try to ignore them, refresh the page, or give up the page for something safer. This is particularly true for most sites that shouldn’t be requiring the type of login information you might expect from your bank, a paid subscription that typically requires you to log in, or online-only email accounts—just to name a few instances where Captcha puzzles might be perfectly reasonable.
Here’s a YouTube guy illustrating the fakes and their main traits.
A major tip-off is that no user identification process should ever ask for personal information like bank or other financial account numbers, passwords connected to those, or sensitive identification information like social security numbers.
As he says, if you see something trying to download, your first chance at defense is to close the tab, the browser, or to shut internet connections, which is not particularly easy to figure out…
The scamming business is growing by leaps and bounds. Vigilance is our first line of defense.
Son F just applied for a weeklong camp and environmental education program that is FREE ($50 deposit, and you get it back if you show up, sort of like when I went to Sustainable Forestry class last summer.) Who knows if he'll be accepted, but it didn't cost anything to apply. I'm being a selfish mom and not telling the rest of the Envirothon group about it. If they get the emails from Catawba Riverkeeper and read them, they'll know ;-).
https://www.ljea.org/watershed-programs/wwa-wilderness-watershed-adventure/
Good morning. Thank you for this potentially helpful notice.