A worker is claiming she received an email from her company offering her a $30 gas card that turned out to be a phishing test.
In a viral tweet, user @KibyDesign_ said the gas card gift was to offered to all employees to “alleviate high gas prices.”
“Got a email from my job saying all employees get a $30 gas card to alleviate high gas prices (we are required to drive clients around),” she said. “Why when I went to sign up it sent me another email saying I was phished by my tech department as a tester and then got assigned training???”
The tweet has almost 13,000 retweets and 131,000 likes. In a statement to the Daily Dot, the user said she works in the healthcare industry and the email “looked legit” but had some “discrepancy in the email address” that she didn’t catch. She did not want to name her company for fear of retaliation.
Users were furious at the company in the replies to the tweet.
“Because clearly your job would never give y’all gas cards or any sort of employee benefit,” one user said.
“I would download a virus just for revenge,” said another.
Gas card phishing scams are on the rise, according to a Shell memo sent to Shell Fuel Rewards members, as gas prices continue to climb throughout the country. It’s very common for hackers and phishing scams to follow trends, like earlier this year when Venmo users reported phishing scams as the real company was giving away money on social media.
Other people responded to the tweet with their own stories of phishing tests.
“My employer did the same thing a couple months ago, but it was “financial assistance for employees struggling due to the pandemic.” Lots of lower-wage employees ARE struggling, it was just so insensitive,” one user wrote. “The union was pissed and the IT group had to issue an apology.”
“At my internship I got an email from HR saying that I got a $1000 scholarship for school and I got so excited I texted my parents,” said another. “Turned out to be phishing and the IT person laughed at me for falling for it.”
“My employer did this to us in December but the email was about an annual performance bonus,” another said.