Picked my son up from work the other day. Let me tell you about my eldest son, N. He is very smart – three A-stars-at-A-Level smart, on-track-for-a-first-in-Computer-Science-at-Queens smart, wanting-to-do-a-masters-in-philosophy-and-more-than-capable smart. He’s clever. Unsure where he gets it from.
He’s working for a fintech (financial technology) company as part of his computer placement year doing his degree.
Picked him up in the car and says “Dad, someone tried to phish me today and I can’t believe I let them” (phishing is the attempt to gather personal information about you in order to, say, gain control of your bank details by pretending to be from an institution you would use).
“Tell me more, son.”
“They said they were from Boots Opticians and phoned from a Belfast number, and I thought it was ok because I’m due a boots opticians appointment”
“Ok.”
“They set an appointment for me for 4:45 and then said they just wanted to confirm some details, so they asked my date of birth and my address and then they hung up – I CAN’T BELIEVE I JUST TOLD THEM THIS”
“so … wait… maybe it was just boots phoning to confirm an appointment?”
“NO! It was phishing! I can’t believe it, I’m so wary of stuff like this, normally I’d’ve just hung up straight away but because I was expecting a call from boots, I just… ugh!”
“Again, maybe it was actually boots phoning to confirm an appointment?”
“NO! It was phishing – I looked up the number and all the numbers for Boots were english numbers”
“I know Boots will phone you from a local number but if you want to phone them then they’ll have on central number that…”
“PHISHING! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT”
“Well, ok, but it seems like they didn’t get that much information from you?”
“I KNOW, I WAS LUCKY.”
Anyway, the next day I got a text from him:
“By the way, I actually wasn’t phished and I have an appointment at 4:45”
I laughed and laughed and laughed.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is the difference between smart and wisdom.