We haven’t had one for a while, so I’m going to point to one that’s on Not Always Right, where a guy got his four-year-old daughter to help shut down a scammer:
I really should have paid more attention to exactly what they called about, but I was focusing on how well the text-to-speech program was doing in trying to sound like a human being. I think it was the “you’ve got a warrant out for your arrest so you have to call us now” scam. After it was done, I hung up and said in my best Russian accent, “Better luck next time, slughead.”
Every once in a while i get very poorly made “aPpLLe” recipts, that claim my bill is past due and that if i dont pay they will shut off my iphone 3gs (i have an XSM). It feel like zero effort was put into this scam…
I AM INWINCIBLE!
Okay, so you’ve got a lottery scam you want to run on someone. Apparently it’s become standard practice that when you try to pursue it, you escalate it into threats of violence and pull up Google Earth so you can convince people you’re watching them right now.
So what do you do when you’re trying to scam someone who used to be the leader of both the FBI and the CIA? You brag to your victim about how the FBI and the CIA can’t find you.
Oops. Guess they can.
Epic fail.
Why, yes, I do completely believe you, robotic voice lady, when you say there is some kind of legal action in effect against my social security number, and I am prepared to call the number so I can talk to an agent about it.
Oh, darn. It’s just too bad that you read off the digits so fast that I couldn’t understand what the telephone number was supposed to be. If only you’d adjusted the timing in between each digit, you might have convinced me to call back. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the government to break down my door and haul me to jail.
Oh, wait! I don’t have to worry about replacing my front door after I get back from jail, because you called my work phone instead of my home phone. That means you would have had to break into my employer’s records, looked up my work number and decided to call me on that one instead of my home phone. If you can’t be bothered to break into a computer system properly, then why bother.
T-X excercising its social engineering skills?
Gonna try the “my PC has become self-aware” line…
Here’s a good one (is for telemarketers, but should also work on scammers) :
edit : Since discourse does not allow more than 3 consequent replies, I had to edit my post in order to squeeze in this one :
Lovely one from NAR :
Lying Is Okay When It’s To A Scammer
Comeuppance, Great Stuff, Jerk, Michigan, Phone Scam, USA | Legal | September 10, 2019
(I got this scam call last week, and I thought I’d play along.)
Caller: heavy accent “Hello, this is Patrick from Microsoft and I have been receiving messages that your computer has a virus.”
Me: “That’s terrible!”
Caller: “If you would go to your computer now and turn it on…”
Me: “You guys haven’t fixed it yet?”
Caller: “What?”
Me: “On Monday, Charles called and said he could fix my computer. I gave him my credit card number and he charged me $350.”
Caller: “Charles did?”
Me: “Yes. William said if I paid $728, my computer would be fixed.”
Caller: “Well, he called from Windows Support; I am calling from Microsoft.”
Me: “Yes, that was where James was calling from, too, on Thursday when I gave him my credit card number and he charged me $93.”
(This went on for about ten minutes. I would always use a different name, day, and dollar amount each time I said I gave my credit card number. It confused “Patrick” so much that he thanked me for my business and hung up. I haven’t had a call now for two weeks!)
I have been getting a ridiculous number of calls from the 980 (North Carolina) area code the past couple weeks. They’re fairly convincing bots, and all they want is for you to say the word “yes.” I had heard the scare stories about scammers who just want to get a recording of you saying “yes” so that they can use it against you later, but I figured it was something people made up.
I can’t wait until Tuesday so I can install iOS 13.1 and flip on the feature that silences calls from any number that isn’t in my contacts list. I have RoboKiller installed on my phone but it’s just not enough and definitely not worth the $30 per year if iOS can silence all these jerks with a single toggle switch.
A common scammer tactic when they’re trying to hit a business is to get a name and then use that name on a later call where they talk to a different person. “Can you confirm the order George placed yesterday?” If the second person doesn’t know, they might say yes, and that gives the scammer permission to turn the lie into an order.
Has a better chance of working the bigger the business is, where the billing department may be separate from the targeted department, but small businesses can fall for it, too.
I now have learnt to identify callers by their numbers. If it is a cell number within the range of our company (company issued cellphones to their employees) I’ll answer.
If it is an unknown number, it most likely is some $company wanting to sell off services like printerers, serverers and the such, which we don’t need at the moment.
Quite very irritating.
I get a lot of spam calls from numbers that start with the same range as my phone number. I’ve learned to not answer those unless I want to mess with them. Answering the phone in Japanese or French usually does the trick.
Hot from NAR : Legal
I Byte Hard
California, Phone Scam, Silly, USA | Legal | September 22, 2019
(I’m sitting on the couch when a toll-free number calls. I’m pretty sure it’s a scammer.)
Me: using a deeper voice than usual “Speak.”
Scammer: “I am calling from technical support for your computer.”
Me: “We don’t have that. I ate it for breakfast.”
Scammer: “Do you have a laptop?”
Me: “No. I ate that for dinner.”
Scammer: “I’m sorry for bothering you.”
Me: “You were definitely bothering me.”
(The scammer hung up. I’m kind of impressed how well he took the implication of me eating my computers.)
That’s classic. In trying to bypass spam filters they’ve made it almost incomprehensible and even less likely to be successful. I love it
Anybody who falls for this deserves the hurt.
I gots an email this morning. Very, very, very weird.
- The “unsubscribe” link is not a hyperlink.
- The whole top area is just one giant hyperlink which goes to http://link.c.aramexglobalshopper.com/u/nrd.php?p=YpoLl9JwHv_1547_3528025_1_4&ems_l=4129081&i=1&d=MjY5MTUxNTc5|WXBvTGw5SndIdg%3D%3D|YjhiYTFlNGFhM2RlMmU3NTE%3D|
- The login button also take you to the same link.
So I treated it with the disdain and scorn it deserve and trashed it.
edit : I just went to the site, and it is aramex’s site. So I’m not sure just what the heck is going on here.
edit : still got the original email, can forward it if anybody’s interested in analyzing it.