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Guest column: How I got 800 spam emails — but no deluxe 'cat dung flinger'

Our guest columnist's humorous take on being the target of a cyberworld hack that left him without a very expensive cat toilet.

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On a recent workday morning I had 800 new emails on my personal laptop, and promises of an opulent ‘cat dung flinger’ on its way from Michigan.

Somewhere out there in the cyberworld, my data was leaked. My email address and my credit card number were sold to the highest bidder. I usually get maybe one email a day at most, so 800 was a clear indicator of something being not right.

I checked my credit card and there was an entry for a robot litter whisker, at about US$1,000. Spending that kind of money on an automated cat scat whisker is criminal on its own, let alone putting it on a stolen credit card.

Fraud has happened before, so I just went online, reported what I knew to be a fraudulent purchase, and within an hour my credit card company sent back an email in which they agreed it was a fraud. They reversed the charges, took the loss, and mailed me a new card. So that all went well.

I reset the computer to thin out the barrage of emails, and went on my way. But among the emails I started to receive notices that my cat whisker would soon be arriving, and that my cat should be prepared for the great event. It seems to me that a cat is ALWAYS prepared for the great event, if the great event involves a litter box.

It’s basically a covered cat box that whisks away the feline guano. I had to look it up. An insulting waste of money, I think they even offer term financing.

I didn’t want to physically take delivery of this item, potentially having a confrontation with the courier. Nor did I want to reply to the email. And I began to wonder how the fraud could work when my credit card was used to order something that physically got delivered to me. How were the thieves making their money?

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I found the company phone number on Google and got someone in customer service. He expressed shock at the situation, which tells me that the bank probably did not bother to tell them there was a fraud.

They asked for details and I would not give any, but we did establish that the device was destined for a delivery address in Montreal, not my place, so I was off the hook. But curiosity … the cat … so I asked him how the fraud actually works, what with delivery and all. The service person said either the delivery gets made and the device is then stolen and sold on the used market for cash, or else it gets sent back to the company for some sort of credit before the fraud is discovered.

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It is just a cost of business for everyone.

Okay then. I hung up, and immediately had a text on my phone thanking me for my call. There have since been many more emails in support of my cat’s new opulent stature in life.

And if I go on my browser there are videos popping up front and centre showing how the cat goes about using the device. Just because I Googled the company. So hackers become unwitting and sometimes paid accessories to modern marketing campaigns.

The digital marketing tsunami response around anyone identified as a customer carried on automatically. The bank response may have been AI as well. The emails have kept coming from everywhere. I look them over. Some of them are either real companies, or hackers spoofing real companies.

I suspect it is real companies, willing to do anything to find new places to sell. If that involves buying a list of email addresses, no questions asked, it would not surprise me that some companies were okay with it, or don’t even know how the minute details of their own marketing are being carried out.

Everything that happened on that Monday morning — the 800 emails and the credit card fraud — may have been automatic.

I think the guy in Michigan had a pulse, but it occurs to me that other than him, I may have been the only living person in this entire saga.

Paul Mahon is editor-in-chief of Ontario Farmer

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