Geek Squad scam emails

[csdude55]

I don't know what's changed, but I'm suddenly getting 15-20 Geek Squad scam emails every day! My site emails are forwarded to Gmail, but I can't tell what email address the scams are actually targeting.

The text rarely says "Geek Squad" or anything, there's always just an image attached that says "Geek Squad" in it.

Any thoughts on how to block it from hitting my Inbox? Either server side (Linux) or through Gmail?

[not2easy]

On gmail you can mark it as junk and they learn the patterns. It may take days or weeks depending on how often they hit. Good to empty the gmail spam folder before it is too huge.

[csdude55]

That's what I've been doing, but it's been a few weeks and it's just getting worse.

The last several had nothing in the To: field and one of my sites' emails in the BCC, so I created this filter:

Matches: (-to:(a|b|c|d|e|f|g|h|i|j|k|l|m|n|o|p|q|r|s|t|u|v|w|x|y|z) bcc:[e-mail]) has:attachment
Do this: Mark as read, Delete it

I could probably use -to:@ instead of using every letter, but I haven't tested it.

So far this has filtered 4 of them properly and hasn't caught anything it shouldn't, so here's hoping!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Careful, Geek Squad emails are a particular breed of fear scam spam. They even put out a TON of misinformation articles to mask the problem, like the current #1 result on DDG for "geek squad email scam". It's completely wrong, probably on purpose.

You're getting them because someone is entering your email address into the Best Buy service portal. If you have a Best Buy account, they learn that because of the response the site gives with a wrong password. If you do not have a Best Buy account, they spoof a fake email and send it to you pretending to be Geek Squad, a subsidiary of Best Buy.

The purpose of this is a legal one, apparently it's easier to scam someone who is not a Best Buy member because it takes Best Buy out of the equation, they can't help non-members.

Regardless, If you open the email spam with images enabled you're going to get more of them, they learn they got past your spam filter. Stop opening them.

Click spam on these emails without worry. It doesn't matter if you have a Best Buy account or not, they have no control over your bank account (which is typically what they claim when the scam moves to refund talk).

Edit: Geek Squad scams have been so prolific, and keep changing, that you can report the scams to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) here - [consumer.ftc.gov...]