Mocking the scammers

general
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We might have had a topic at some point in the past about scams and tips to avoid or deal with them, but it was probably many years ago. So let’s start a new one.

 
Unsolicited, random phone call or text message: “I’m with your credit card company and you qualify for a lower interest rate.”

Oh, isn’t that nice. Big credit card company realized that they are collecting too much money from the interest and fees they charge people, so they’re offering to reduce their profits to help out the little guy. How absolutely generous of them!

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This one’s quoted verbatim:

Subject: Ćoncentrate and do not be angry

Hello,

If you were more vigilant while playing with yourself, I wouldn’t worry you. I don’t think that playing with yourself is extremely awful, but when all colleagues, relatives and friends get video of it- it is awful for you.

I seized malisious soft on a porn site which was visited by you. When the target tap on a play button, device begins recording the screen and all cameras on ur device begins working.

Moreover, my program makes a dedicated desktop supplied with keylogger function from the device , so I could save all contacts from ur e-mail, messengers and other social networks. I’m writing on this e-mail because It’s your working address, so you will read it.

In my opinion 890 usd is pretty enough for this little misstep. I made a split screen vid(records from screen (interesting category ) and camera ooooooh… its awful AF)

So its your choice, if u want me to destroy this сompromising evidence use my bitсоin wаllet addrеss-     (code omitted)

You have one day after opening my message, I put the special tracking pixel in it, so when you will open it I will see.If ya want me to share proofs with ya, reply on this message and I will send my creation to five contacts that I’ve got from ur device.

P.S… U are able to complain to cops, but I don’t think that they can solve ur problem, the inquisition will last for several months- I’m from Belarus - so I dgf LOL

Oh noes! The 'leet haxxor got ahold of a video I apparently made, I guess, using a webcam I don’t even have, and uploaded the video to a website of dubious morals, I think? Or was it I went to a website of ill repute and because I played a video, the website launched the program he wrote that activated my non-existent camera and installed a keylogger? Or did he reverse the polarity so that my monitors turned into cameras?

I suppose what looked like a message sent in plain text could actually have been an HTML-formatted message using a monospace font like Courier. If so, then my life is over! That tracking pixel will haunt me for the end of my days! He’ll be able to find me no matter where I go! Can’t risk that happening. I have to burn this computer.

Wish me luck, Fred. I’m off to crash the server.

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All I will ever say to that ne’er-do-well is “Come at me, bro!”

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Wow. That’s a new one for me.

I had a student answer one of those Microsoft scammer calls in class once. He put the guy on speaker and we strung him along for a while until I decided it was time to get back to lecture, so I said, “By they way, class, this is what a Microsoft scammer sounds like, and oh, by the way, you’ve been speaking to a class full of IT students.” He hung up as we all started laughing at him.

For the recording calls, I’ve found that if you answer the phone in another language, they almost always just disconnect.

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This is getting sent to people at my work. Although the one that the people have been sent has better spelling and grammar. Also the price on this is much lower than what is being asked for here!

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Today’s phone call: “Hi, we’re from the your local channel provider.”

Oh, really? You’re from “the your local channel provider”? I’ll give you credit. The speech synthesis program you used was convincing enough to sound like it was recorded by a person, if not for the obvious point where a variable was used in the spiel. The “the your local channel provider”, indeeed.

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I don’t know if this was a scam or not, but I had someone cold call me today about my house, saying that they wanted to buy it. Odd, but possible considering how tight the housing market is here after last year’s and this year’s fires.

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We get calls every few weeks from people purporting to be real estate agents and asking if we want to sell our house. Our standard answer is “that’s none of your business and, if we did, we certainly wouldn’t do it through some guy (or chick, depending on the caller’s gender) who cold-called us about selling our house”.

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“Yes, but it has great sentimental value, so I’ll need to get at least 6.2 million dollars to do the deal.”
(you could probably buy all the homes in several blocks of my neighborhood for that)

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Or just act like a very thickheaded person and waste their time…

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I would sell it for that. :wink: That would buy about 4 houses around here in the cheaper part of town.

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We haven’t ever gotten telephone calls, but routinely we get postcard mailers from realtors… “The Smith down the block just sold their house for ! Call us if you’d like an estimate!”

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I get those too. I’ve only gotten phone calls two or three times in my life. Right now people are desperate to buy because so many homes have burned between last year and this years’ fires.

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20 posts were split to a new topic: Travel Trailers/RVs

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And don’t forget about the Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle search engine.

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I think they just saw the blackmail episode of Black Mirror and thought “Hey, here’s a scam I can work with!”

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They haven’t called me for a while, so I don’t have any mocking reserved for them, but one of the scams making the rounds earlier this year was the Verizon cell phone rebate scam. Something about you’re eligible for a $900 rebate.

Problem 1: The caller ID is spoofed to show Verizon’s tech support line.
Which leads to problem 2: Why would Verizon’s tech support division make calls about something that relates to billing for service? (Answer: they wouldn’t.)
Problem 3: He tried to get me to tell him who owns my phone. It’s a company-provided phone, so my response to him was, “If you were really from Verizon, you’d already know that.”

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Not so much mocking as pointing out they’re shooting themselves in the foot: Robo-calls in the US are going to get a larger number of potential “hits” (people that take the bait) if it’s in English instead of another language like Chinese. Go for the largest common demoninator, folks.

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Ah, an unsolicited fax, proclaiming that I can “forget the bank” and get a half million dollar loan with no collateral, low credit score, etc. Oh, look! It’s got the “Accredited Business” A+ rating logo. And the CNN Money logo. And the Fox Business logo! That must mean it’s legit.

Okay, sounds good. Just need to know what company I’ll be getting the loan from.

Well, that’s not good. They don’t even have their business name on the fax. What a shame. If only they’d told me what company they were, I would have leapt at the chance. Guess I’ll just have to go to the bank if I want a loan. At least I’ll know what bank I’m dealing with.

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Why not send a fax back to them making the font very, very, very small? :slight_smile: