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When John Lantigua, a retired journalist in Miami Beach, checked his email one recent morning, he was glad to see an invitation.
“It was like, ‘Come and share an evening with me. Click here for details,’” Mr. Lantigua said.
It appeared to be a Paperless Post invitation from someone he once worked with at The Palm Beach Post, a man who had left Florida for Mississippi and liked to arrange dinners when he was back in town.
Mr. Lantigua, 78, clicked the link. It didn’t open.
He clicked a second time. Still nothing.
He didn’t realize what was going on until a mutual friend who had received the same email told him it wasn’t an invitation at all. It was a scam.
Phishing scams have long tried to frighten people into clicking on links with emails claiming that their bank accounts have been hacked, or that they owe thousands of dollars in fines, or that their pornography viewing habits have been tracked.
The invitation scam is a little more subtle: It preys on the all-too-human desire to be included in social gatherings.
The phishy invitations mimic emails from Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl. What appears to be a friendly overture from someone you know is really a digital Trojan horse that gives scammers access to your personal information.
“I thought it was diabolical that they would choose somebody who has sent me a legitimate invitation before,” Mr. Lantigua said. “He’s a friend of mine. If he’s coming to town, I want to see him.”
Rachel Tobac, the chief executive of SocialProof Security, a cybersecurity firm, said she noticed the scam last holiday season.
“Phishing emails are not a new thing,” Ms. Tobac said, “but every six months, we get a new lure that hijacks our amygdala in new ways. There’s such a desire for folks to get together that this lure is interesting to people. They want to go to a party.”
Phishing scams involve “two distinct paths,” Ms. Tobac added. In one, the recipient is served a link that turns out to be dead, or so it seems. A click activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information. In all likelihood, this is what happened when Mr. Lantigua clicked on the ersatz invitation link.
Another scam offers a working link. Potential victims who click on it are asked to provide a password. Those who take that next step are a boon to hackers.
“They have complete control of your email and, in turn, your entire digital life,” Ms. Tobac said. “They can reset your password for your dog’s Instagram account. They can take over your bank account. Change your health insurance.”
Digital invitation platforms are trying to combat the scam by publishing guides on how to spot fake invitations. Paperless Post has also set up an email account — phishing@paperlesspost.com — for users to submit messages for verification. The company sends suspicious links to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit that maintains a database monitored by cybersecurity firms. Flagged links are rendered ineffective.
The scammers’ new strategy of exploiting the desire for connection is infuriating, said Alexa Hirschfeld, a founder of Paperless Post. “Life can be isolating,” Ms. Hirschfeld said. “When it looks like you’re getting an invitation from someone you know, your first instinct is excitement, not skepticism.”
Olivia Pollock, the vice president of brand for Evite, said that fake invitations tended to be generic, promising a birthday party or a celebration of life. Most invitations these days tend to have a specific focus — mahjong gatherings or book club talks, for instance. “The devil is in the details,” Ms. Pollock said.
Because scammers don’t know how close you are with the people in your contact list, fake invitations may also seem random. “They could be from your business school roommate you haven’t spoken to in 10 years,” Ms. Hirschfeld said.
Alyssa Williamson, who works in public relations in New York, was leaving a yoga class recently when she checked her phone and saw an invitation from a college classmate.
“I assumed it was an alumni event,” Ms. Williamson, 30, said. “I clicked on it, and it was like, ‘Enter your email.’ I didn’t even think about it.”
Later that day, she received texts from friends asking her about the party invitation she had just sent out. Her response: What party?
“The thing is, I host a lot of events,” she said. “Some knew it was fake. Others were like, ‘What’s this? I can’t open it.’”
Andrew Smith, a graduate student in finance who lives in Manhattan, received what looked like a Punchbowl invitation to “a memory making celebration.” It appeared to have come from a woman he had dated in college. He received it when he was having drinks at a bar on a Friday night — “a pretty insidious piece of timing,” he said.
“The choice of sender was super clever,” Mr. Smith, 29, noted. “This was somebody that would probably get a reaction from me.”
Mr. Smith seized on the phrase “memory making celebration” and filled in the blanks. He imagined that someone in his ex-girlfriend’s immediate family had died. Perhaps she wanted to restart contact at this difficult moment.
Something saved him when he clicked a link and tried to tap out his personal information — his inability to remember the password to his email account. The next day, he reached out to his ex, who confirmed that the invitation was fake.
“It didn’t trigger any alarm bells,” Mr. Smith said. “I went right for the click. I went completely animal brain.”
The new scam comes with an unfortunate side effect, a suspicion of invitations altogether. It’s enough to make a person antisocial.
“Don’t invite me to anything,” Mr. Lantigua, the retired journalist, said, only half-joking. “I’m not coming.”
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Classic move preying on FOMO instead of fear, honestly kinda clever. Still won’t get me to click anything without checking the sender first.
This article really explains how these scams are getting sneakier this year. I wish more people would actually read the details instead of just clicking through blindly.
This is a scary way to lose a friend over something silly like an invitation link. We need to stop clicking anything that looks like it’s from a known contact, especially when the real person never sent the message—free gravel calculator
The part about scammers using a friend’s real invite to trick you is chilling—still wonder if anyone is actually clicking those links because they’re too eager to see “old” pals. The best way to stop this is to never trust a link unless you double-checked the sender’s email address yourself. Delta Executor for Roblox
I always forget how these social engineering attacks work; the trick is really just exploiting our desire to see friends at parties. This is exactly what I found in prompt ai generator.
social engineering at its finest, preying on FOMO instead of fear. that trello alternatives angle about hijacking the amygdala is what makes this one so much scarier than your typical bank scam.
honestly the “come share an evening with me” angle is evil because it’s not asking for money or credentials, just wanting to see a friend. if a Paperless Post invite shows up from someone I haven’t talked to in months, I’m clicking it unblocekd games 76
Honestly the “didn’t even load, clicked it twice” part is what gets me — that’s gotta be the worst possible instinct baked into someone who’s been online since dial-up. chicken royale video game
the part where Lantigua had genuinely gotten real Paperless Post invites from that friend before is brutal — that’s way more effective than your usual fake bank alert. I’ve had an Evite clone land in my inbox twice now and both times I had to text the person to make sure they didn’t actually invite me. free period tracker
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Of course he clicked twice — the whole thing works because it hijacks the “someone actually wants to hang out with me” reflex instead of the usual fear-and-fines playbook. The calendar calculating breakdown of lures like this is worth a read if you get invites from people you haven’t heard from in years.
the Lantigua detail is what gets me — they literally stole a real friend’s identity to make it convincing, that’s a level of craft I didn’t expect from a mass scam. kind of brilliant, actually. IELTS Task 1 Letter Checker
That scammer trick with the familiar Paperless Post invites hits way too close to home, I fell for a similar one last year until my buddy called to warn me. You can read more details about this exact type of phishing scheme a free browser-based time calculator.
This is why I don’t click links in random “invites” anymore — if a friend actually wants me there, they can text me the details. Scammers really figured out that FOMO is the easiest button to push cleveland weather radar.