This past few months I have faced a new lesson: how to recognize and avoid being dragged into AI phishing impersonations and threats. As an author, especially perhaps a would-be successful author, I have experienced a deluge of AI attacks disguised as unbelievable (yes…) boons. A real editor from a major publishing house tells me she has recently discovered my work and she finds it compelling and valuable; what new projects might I be I working on? This one took me to my Gullible Zone for over six weeks! I sent her proposal materials for my current projects; she wrote back with detailed, cogent sounding responses and soon recommended an agent. That supposed agent connected the next morning and asked for a professional query letter for my major current work. After I sent her one, she identified flaws and suggested I should hire someone to help me write a better query letter. I balked at that hook, unwilling to spend money to hire anyone to help with my work; so ‘she’ said okay, keep developing the proposal and send it to her when ready.
I was thrilled at such glowing attention from a major editor and agent! I initially looked past the fact that the agent did not show up anywhere I searched for her online. But I started searching online further about both the editor and agent and quickly discovered that this is a well-known, frequent phishing scam! Perpetrators mainly from Nigeria use AI tools to impersonate an actual editor or agent or marketer, hooking their target with realistic sounding—and always encouraging!—responses to materials and concerns. The specific editor impersonated with me is in fact a real editor at Random House, but this editor has nothing at all to do with this scam.
I started asking questions then and let the scammers know I was onto them. I asked the ‘agent’ AI what her agency was and It sent back an obviously fake website with testimonials. Probably the same scammer who was impersonating the editor was also the agent and testimonial writer. Once I clearly stated that I had reported the scam to both the fake agent and fake editor emails, they stopped. However, soon afterwards I received a new scourge: a legal sounding notice that one of my blog images (I take mine from pixabay.com free images) had violated copyright on one of their graphics. This one reached me because it seemed highly credible; they showed me my usage in a post and said all I needed to do was to pay (at first) $350.00, but then $999.00 to ‘upgrade’ to an annually recurring license that would cover past and future usage. When I tried to chat with their customer service online they sent me a contact form that, had I not read the fine print, would have charged me a certain amount that would recur every week or so in perpetuity! I searched online and sure enough, this is another common phishing attempt mainly targeting bloggers. I reported it as phishing and have not received further threatening emails though they might go to a spam cemetery zone.
I nearly cancelled my blog altogether after recognizing these sorts of reasonable sounding threats that are out there. (Notice, no graphics today!) But I persist. There is a hidden blessing in at least the first of these scam forays: believing that a major editor could be interested in my writing truly has led me to improve and move forward with my major writing projects. I will contact a real agency once I feel my work is ready to take forward.
So, authors beware! Three dots at the bottom of a received email open to response options that allow you to report Phishing. I do that now, often several times daily, for every would-be marketer, reviewer, editor or agent that has recently “discovered” my “work.”
Write on!
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Better Endings 