Posting this as a warning because I came way too close to falling for it.
Found a very convincing apartment listing in Utrecht on Booking.com. After messaging, they asked to move the conversation to WhatsApp, which in hindsight should’ve been my first red flag.
The replies came from what looked like a legit business account using a real woman’s profile. I later realized the person in the photos is a real individual who lives in Paris and has nothing to do with this.
After some pretty solid social engineering, they asked me to request the apartment through Booking and then sent a very convincing phishing email pretending to be Booking (from [email protected]
). At the end of the email they included an IBAN and asked for a bank transfer.
That’s when it finally clicked and I stopped. Still feels embarrassing how close I came.
Sharing this so others don’t fall for the same thing. Never send money outside Booking’s payment system, no matter how legit it looks
.
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