Inspired by the scary film franchise, playwright Levi Holloway and Punchdrunk maestro Felix Barrett are bringing the ‘bizarrely joyous’ world of terror to the stage
Malevolent spirits be damned – theatres can be haunted simply by the memory of bad plays and perhaps unscary horror in particular. The last time London’s Ambassadors theatre aimed to give audiences the shivers, with The Enfield Haunting, it led to some frightfully poor reviews. But a couple of years later, this intimate West End playhouse is hosting Paranormal Activity, a new instalment in the franchise that was kickstarted by a low-budget supernatural movie about a couple plagued by inexplicable nocturnal noises. “Hold your nerve” runs the play’s tagline – a directive you suspect applies not just to the audience.
Arriving at the theatre on the day of the first preview, it’s not creepy bumps and thuds that echo through the building but whizzing drills, sound checks and the last-minute discussions of a crew with a deadline. Perched in the dress circle bar, US playwright Levi Holloway and director Felix Barrett (best known as the founder of immersive theatre specialists Punchdrunk) are discussing how rarely they have been frightened in the theatre.
A short while ago, our friends at Malwaretips wrote about a text scam impersonating Robinhood, a popular US-based investment app that lets people trade stocks and cryptocurrencies. The scam warns users about supposed “suspicious activity” on their accounts.
As if to demonstrate that this phishing campaign is still very much alive, one of our employees received one of those texts.
“Alert!
Robinhood Securities Risk Warning:
Our automated security check system has detected anomalies in your account, indicating a potential theft. A dedicated security check link is required for review. Please click the link below to log in to your account and complete the security check.
(If the link isn’t clickable, reply Y and reopen this message to click the link, or copy it into your browser.)
Robinhood Securities Official Security Team”
As usual, we see some red flags:
Foreign number: The country code +243 belongs to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not the US, where the real Robinhood is based.
Urgency: The phrase “Immediate Action” is designed to pressure you.
Fake domain: The URL that tries to look like the legitimate robinhood.com website.
Reply: The instructions to reply “Y” if a link isn’t clickable are a common phishing tactic.
But if the target follows the instructions to visit the link, they would find a reasonably convincing copy of Robinhood’s login page. It wouldn’t be automatically localized like the real one, but nobody in the US would know the difference. Logging in there hands the scammers your Robinhood login credentials and allows them to clean out your account.
According to Malwaretips, some of the fake websites even redirected you to the legitimate site after showing the “verification complete” message.
They also warned that some scammers will try to harvest additional personal data from the account, including:
Tax documents
Full name
Social Security Number (if on file)
Bank account information
How to stay safe
What to do if you receive texts like these
The best tip to stay safe is to make sure you’re aware of the latest scam tactics. Since you’re reading our blog, you’re off to a good start.
Never reply to or follow links in unsolicited tax refund texts, calls, or emails, even if they look urgent.
Never share your Social Security number or banking details with anyone claiming to process your tax refund.
Go direct. If in doubt, contact the company through official channels.
Use an up-to-date real-time anti-malware solution, preferably with a web protection component.
Pro tip: Did you know that you can submit suspicious messages like these to Malwarebytes Scam Guard, which instantly flags known scams?
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