Filter my spam vs. possible ID theft (notorious e-lance site)

September 16, 2021 5:08 PM

I've received strange e-mails persistently offering translation jobs -- but in languages I do not know -- from a member of a well-known electronic freelancers' clearinghouse. I am not using the company's name for obvious reasons, but it's one of the big ones. Has someone stolen my identity or is this. a spear phishing attack?

I signed up for a basic membership with COMPANY.com in 2006, when I was out of work, then I got a full time job and forgot about it (dumb, I know). I received only generic marketing e-mails from this company until a few days ago, when I started receiving offers in my inbox for translation jobs in languages that I do not have competence in.

I had barely used COMPANY.com when I first signed up in 2006 and decided I didn't like the look of it; projects go to lowest bidder, pay is very poor for translation. My previous translation experience was through an university clearinghouse, and my competence is only in a couple of languages, none of which were requested by the recent COMPANY.com e-mailer. I am not Melisande Stokes!

The e-mails originate with the sender [many random letters]@messages-COMPANY.com. They have the look of emails sent from within COMPANY. I don't know how they made it into my inbox, but I had recently signed back into Academia.edu without checking the privacy settings. I have just turned all those permissions off.

I did not reply directly to the sender directly or through COMPANY. I did not click on anything in his messages.
I started deleting the messages, then I blocked the sender.

COMPANY.com sent me a message saying that the sender's translation offer has been removed because it violated terms of service.

I am now freaking out that someone is using my e-mail and is squatting on my COMPANY.com account. I don't know if attempting to log into my COMPANY.com account will incriminate me. I am also freaking out that the guy, if he is just a spammer, will continue to harass me.

I contacted COMPANY.com via reply (I know you shouldn't do this either) but they know nothing about it. I contacted COMPANY.com through their website contact form and have not yet received a reply.

What is the likelihood that the person who sends aggressive spammy invites has access to my account or is this a spear phishing scam that is marvelously targeted to my own skills but not quite? If it is a scam, I suspect they got my data from the LinkedIn breach, where they could have mined my resume.

Should I terminate my COMPANY.com account, assuming I can get into it or should attempt to?

What else do I need to do (a) change my passwords; (b) freeze my credit; (c) get a new e-mail address? I have other e-mail addresses with the same provider. (d) notify my ISP, which is MEGA INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER.com and has a poor reputation.

Please MeMail me if you want more details.

posted by bad grammar to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I don't think you need to do any of those things? It sounds like you're getting ill-fitting job offer spam from a freelancer site, which is extremely normal. Unless there is something I'm missing, there's no reason to think your account has been compromised. You can always try to login and see if there's any recent activity, which is also an extremely normal thing to do and in no way incriminating. But it sounds like you are just getting job spam. I taught a couple courses via a similar site 15 years ago and I still get offers to teach programming classes for languages I've never used.
posted by Jairus at 5:53 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I'm sorry this is happening because it sounds very stressful. However, I really don't think you have anything to worry about and you definitely don't need to change your email address, or freeze your credit, or anything like that. It sounds like you got sent some spam through an internal messaging system and that the company figured out that someone was spamming a bunch of their users through that internal messaging system, shut down the spammer, and then a message was (probably automatically) sent out to everyone that the spammer sent the canceled job to in order to let them know that that job was no longer available. You were almost certainly one of many people that were sent these messages through the company's internal messaging system. Unless part of the story is missing, you did not send any spam and your account didn't do anything but receive messages from someone who was being annoying and violating their terms of service.

Since it doesn't sound like you even use this account, my recommendation would be to go in, remove your information, and then delete the account if possible. If you use the account password anywhere else, you should change the password on those other sites, just for general hygiene purposes.

For a variety of boring reasons, I have a lot of trauma around this kind of stuff (financial documentation, faceless bureaucratic systems that I could get caught in, official letters, etc.) and I might gently suggest that you share that trait with me. It's really hard, but everything in this situation is going to be okay.
posted by twelve cent archie at 6:00 AM on September 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it sounds like you've received some spam, I'm not seeing how you're making the leap to "I need to freeze my credit, get a whole new email address and notify my ISP."

You mentioned in a previous similar question that you have anxiety disorder and the answers were all along the lines of "This is totally fine, it's your anxiety speaking".

I think this is the same again. Time to fall back on whatever you use to talk yourself down from the anxiety ledge. Go take a walk, do some deep breathing, pet a fuzzy animal, whatever works for you.
posted by penguin pie at 6:02 AM on September 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: A follow-up. I logged into COMPANY.com and found no activity there but one invite that was actually in my languages and no trace of the persistent invitation, which thus was probably not genuine and spam. I have deleted my COMPANY.com account.
posted by bad grammar at 5:25 PM on September 19, 2021