This is the last thing you’d expect while remote working in Starbucks!
But career coach Madeleine Mann, says someone was about to cyber scam her over her coffee!
She told her followers: “I was almost just scammed at a Starbucks. This could happen to anyone, so I need to share this. I was working out of a Starbucks, as I do. I was sitting there for a while and a woman kept looking over at me.
Madeleine continued, “Now, I didn’t think anything of it because people do stare at me. They recognize me from the news or from social media, as I help job seekers go job shopping and they might have seen my YouTube channel or something.”
“She eventually comes up to me and says ‘Hey, my phone ran out of battery,’ and shows me her dead phone.”
“Can I plug my phone into your computer to get a quick charge?,” the woman asked the career coach.
But “Alarm bells were going off in my head,” Madeleine explained. “I paid attention to cyber security training that you should never allow anyone to plug anything into your computer.
“Now, there was a chance this woman was actually telling the truth and she needed the help. And the helpfulness in me wanted to help her. So, what did I do? I scavenged in my backpack and pulled out an external battery…. this is the solution to her problems.”
We think you know where this is going…
But that wasn’t enough to satisfy this would-be hacker! No.
Madeleine soon found out her instincts were correct!
She continued: “But her face, when I showed her this solution, showed me she was a scammer…her face fell.”
Madeleine added: “And she goes ‘Oh, I don’t know that my cord will fit into that battery’… then she fumbled to get the cord in there and of course it fit. She went back to her table and sat with the battery. What could happen to me if I let her do that? This is a huge warning, never trust anyone that wants to plug anything into your computer…”
Watch the full clip here:
@selfmademillennial Stay safe out there fam. These scam artists are getting crafty. Listen to IT professionals and level up your cybersecurity #cybersecurity #scammeralert #scammed #starbucks #workfromanywhere
Here’s what people had to say about scammers!
This poster’s correct! It’s a scammer who just happens to like her coffee but nada to do with Starbucks!
Oooh more sage advice on how to swerve the scammers!
Madeleine’s got top marks from a cybersecurity pro!
Be careful out there, fam!