Paul Krugman’s no good, very bad Internet day

This is fine.
Even more fine.
New York Times security team to the rescue.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor at the City University of New York, and New York Times columnist, experienced a chain of what appear to be Internet scam mishaps based on posts to Twitter that he later deleted. Initially, Krugman claimed to be “on the phone with my computer security service, and as I understand it someone compromised my IP address and is using it to download child pornography.”

This is a common phone scam trope, and it appears that Krugman finally realized it was a scam—with the New York Times security team responding to assist him. But that wasn’t until he tweeted again in confusion about another scam in the form of a spam email regarding a deposit to a nonexistent Bitcoin wallet.

We attempted at the time to reach out to Professor Krugman and CUNY to get more details but got no response.

It’s not clear whether the call to Krugman was a targeted scam or if he was simply the target of an arbitrary robocall scam similar to those Ars has reported on in the past (and this reporter has received three calls from in the last two days).

Despite his field expertise, Krugman is a prime candidate for such attacks, given his public presence and previously demonstrated unease with technology. He may well have been targeted by someone attempting to use social engineering to gain access to his computer. But victims of these sorts of attacks often don’t report them because of embarrassment over being fooled.

I’ve done a number of education sessions with the general public on robocalls and Internet scams—including a talk that I was doing at a public library as Krugman was beginning to post about his experience. Given the amount of experience that many people—particularly senior citizens—have with interacting with technical support, their reliance on landline phones, and discomfort with technology in general, it’s not surprising that scammers find enough targets to continue to economically support themselves.

So it’s critical that people with some technical know-how and experience educate family members and people in their communities about these types of criminal activity. Tell them that they should not click on that link in an email or a Facebook message, that Windows will not call them, and show them the Federal Trade Commission website report on phone scams.

Listing image by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for the New York Times