Two weeks ago, I received an email from the Illinois Tollway indicating that my credit card had expired. It was sent to my Gmail account (the correct account for the Tollway), it looked like spam, so I deleted it. They sent a second email, and that went straight to deleted mail as well.

One week ago, I saw an article talking about scams and they specifically referenced expired credit cards for tollway systems. I celebrated. My credit card wasn’t expired, this was a scam, and I was on top of it. #forthewin

Then, yesterday, I went to our mailbox (at the end of the driveway) and low and behold, there was a nice little mailer, specifically from the Illinois Tollway, letting me know my credit card had expired. This caused me to initiate the action by logging into the I-Pass system and updating my credit card.

The moral of the story is to be hypervigilant. Don’t assume the email notifying you of a problem is real. The FBI recommended last month NOT TO EVER CLICK A LINK IN GMAIL. Wow. Never? Yep. Never.

The scams are intense and frequent. If you receive an email from a vendor, go directly to that vendor’s site and login directly to see if there is an issue. Even if you’re expecting the email. No more clicking on emails.

This leads us to a deeper question. If the FBI is recommending no clicks and email scams are at their highest point ever… when we combine the current climate with our roles as recruiters, how are we going to counter this on our desks? Food for thought.

There is a positive note. If people as a whole are untrusting and hypervigilant for scams, AI recruiting is going to have a major human roadblock.