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The original was posted on /r/sysadmin by /u/Sunsparc on 2026-03-28 03:21:41+00:00.

Had a new hire start this week that got a gift card scam text within 2 hours. They updated their LinkedIn right before they left to go into the office. The manager was absolutely floored at how fast it happened, but seemed understand when I demonstrated exactly how it could have happened.

Person had the area they live in on their LinkedIn profile. I googled their name plus the area code and that led me to a few WhitePages.com entries for the person. I checked their public Facebook page and it had a tagged post from their sister, which matched a “Related To” person on one of the WhitePages entries that also listed the new hire’s cell phone number. It was behind a paywall, but it was enough to validate the information for me. From there, all the scammer had to do was pay the $10 to get the cell phone number, easily look up who our CEO is, and text the new hire. I found the information in about 5 minutes, I imagine the scammer had most of it ready to go.