I got a voicemail from the Kroger pharmacist who told me to call her back. It was definitely the Kroger pharmacy number because I’ve had to call it before, so that was not part of the scam.
However, some scammer who knew who my health insurance company was (I get it through my wife, which ads to the creepiness here) tried to get my personal health data from the Kroger pharmacy. They asked for personal info and the pharmacist said she wouldn’t give it to them but would have me call them back.
She told me all of this when I called her to find out what was up. She gave me the number and the first thing I did was look it up to see if it was legitimate because that just sounded off to me.
Sure enough, the first link that came up was a Facebook post (Why Facebook as the first link in the search? No idea.) warning about that number specifically scamming people by pretending to be my insurance company, followed by other links on other websites talking about it being a scammer source, and not just just for health insurance scamming.
They’ve also somehow fucked with the SEO because in between those were legitimate links to my health insurance company, but that phone number is not on the pages.
I feel really bad for anyone who falls for this, because it was clearly just legitimate enough for the pharmacist to not suggest to me that I should be careful about being scammed. I know exactly who I talked to and she’s a cool lady, so I’m pretty sure she would have if she was sure enough.
Update if anyone is still around: Contacted the state pharmacy board and also went to the local pharmacy and told them about it. I couldn’t figure out the right people to get in touch with at the FBI, but I have a feeling I’m going to have to contact the state attorney general next and ick.
You are partly right … but if you sign up to a service to some of these dumb apps, they will redirect you to different sources to verify a purchase (whether it is legitimate or not). At the time, I was having a bunch of silly fun with my nieces and nephews fooling around with a new phone and finding new apps to play with. I think I got too carried away and wanted to get something to work without being careful enough.
The fun part was in finding some dumb face filter app that turned my big brown brooding middle aged male Indigenous face into a beautiful petite Asian princess that could talk and chat with my nieces and nephews. That was an expensive bit of fun that I paid for later.
Fyi the word for nieces and nephews is niblings. That way you can just say a single word