Lowe’s Scam

When I was a customer service associate at Lowe’s, I worked in the Lawn and Garden department. It was a normal day, and I was stocking some shelves when my work phone suddenly rang. When I picked up the phone, I said, “Hello, thank you for calling the Lowe’s Lawn and Garden department. This is Jeremy. How can I help you?” The person on the other end of the phone said he was part of the Lowe’s I.T. department and asked me to stop what I was doing immediately and walk to one of the register computers and perform an “update.” The interesting part about this whole situation was that the scammer knew my manager’s name and informed me that my manager sent him my way. As someone who is studying computer science and engineering, I hate to admit that I fell for this scam… after standing at the registrar’s, I thought about it for a second and hung up. I immediately informed my manager, and he said that it was a scam. Turns out there was a caller earlier that day who was claiming to return an item and kept asking to talk to the manager. Once the scammer got connected to the manager and got their name, they hung up. This was an important lesson for me as I want to get into cybersecurity one day, and it taught me to always think twice. Thank you for reading about my experience with a scammer.