You write your clickbait titles using variables, don’t you?
“The Tragedy of $person Just Gets Sadder And Sadder”
“Here’s The $optional_adjective Truth About $person”
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Some consumer advice: If you get a package shipped to you from Amazon, eBay or other online marketplaces that you didn’t order, especially if it’s something small, lightweight and usual, it could be the “brushing” scam.
A scammer finds your address online or gets it through a third party, creates an order for something they sell and uses your address for the ship to address. They put something different in the box that doesn’t cost much to ship. Once it’s received, that counts as a verified purchase and they can then write a positive review about the other product.
The other tactics are they create an account in your name, take over your account or use your account to create new accounts with your address. So just like credit card statements, you have to look through your purchase history on a regular basis to make sure nothing you didn’t actually order is there.
If it happens, change your password and contact the customer service department for the company.
The scam seems to have started in 2019 when Amazon packages started showing up that people never ordered. In 2020, they came with seeds in them but the description on the package was something else like earrings and the package originated in China.
In all of these cases, you’re legally allowed to keep whatever shows up as a gift, but I’d throw them away since you’ve got no idea about the quality of the materials in them. In the case of seeds or anything else biological, you might want to consider burning it instead of throwing it away. At the very least, whatever type of seed it is could be an invasive species for your area (look up Kudzu on Wikipedia) or has the potential to spread plant viruses or diseases.
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TRIFFIDS!!!
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RETURN OF THE GIANT HOGWEED!
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Pfft. Cold resistant Kudzu.
New tactic: When you answer the phone, the person on the other end identifies herself as either Sarah Lawson or Sarah Wilson, and then if you say anything further, she switches to a prerecording of the scam. Which company is she calling from? Why the “Department of Visa and Mastercard”, of course.
I’m slowly working through a really odd, stupid scam:
Ordered something from Amazon. (One of the ‘Toys to Games’ Amiibo figures from Nintendo. It is, in many cases, cheaper to order a Japanese import for $20 over a ‘new’ US release that is $40 or higher and I just want to have a little endorphin hit, but that’s my personal issue…)
Anyway, ordered and it should be simple, but I got an email (via Amazon) requesting I cancel my order because the product was damaged so they’re asking me to cancel the order.
This seemed suspect, and I looked it up. It’s literally one of Amazon’s pre-written reasons for reporting an order to them. I think it’s done so the vendor doesn’t get dinged for selling something they don’t have, but it’s still kind of shady and suspect.
I’ve reported it and will see what happens.
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I’m guessing these are some of the calls we’re getting from CREDITMGMTBUREAU or similar. I’ve been ignoring them.
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YAAAAAAAAY!
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I watched it yesterday.
The scammers really are clever, setting up elaborate fronts etc. Shoo.
The only way to combat this scourge is to educate people.
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An interesting discovery I have made recently is that you can crash certain auto-diallers; it relies on several BT traditionalisms so may not work everywhere.
There seem to be only three models of this particular dialling bot that use British English voices, two female one male, and these are the three the trick works on.
When the phone rings, you pick it up. It’s a call from the power company confirming your disconnection, of course 
Hold down star. That is all you do. There’ll be a sudden loud computer beep, then you release star. The line goes quiet but is still connected and it has died.
How does it work? Well I’m not entirely sure but I think it’s a combination of lazy setup and bad software. On pretty much any IVR on a BT system, star takes you to main menu. These bots however are only really being used to dial out, and then listen for the button press 1 or 2. So you request what is effectively “mu” from a boolean, and the system hangs because nobody ever programmed in a main menu.
I don’t know for how long or even if it prevents the bot from calling out again, but it has been massively cutting down on the number of scam calls we get.
Eddited 4 spellin n grammer
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Here’s hoping that, when the bot crashes, it is dumb enough to keep the line open, incurring charges.
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Interestingly. That’s a shitty design, but I guess scammers don’t pay top dollar/pound for teach to run a scam that has a pretty low chance of a payout.
I got 3 scam calls in one day last week. All with fake caller ID.
Two were automated voices saying my Amazon Prime subscription had been renewed for “dollars seventy-nine point nine nine” and I had to press “1” to cancel this feature. At least that’s I presume it was going say as I hung up after about 3 seconds.
The other was a real, live human in a noisy room yelling at me that she was from (big Aussie Telco) to inform me “There was a problem with my Internet Line”. Sadly, she hung up before I could even get 3 words out… Maybe my “Oookayyy now” was the give away?
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Speaking of Amazon, Mark Rober did an excellent investigation on this type of scam - see the post above by @Rizak
Sadly people tend to fall for these type of scams… 
God, the scammers are such scumbags. I got a text this morning saying it was from the EDD and that there was suspicious activity on my account with a link. Of course, I didn’t click on the link, but I did go to the EDD site to check my account, and, of course, there was nothing weird.
Taking income from people on unemployment has got to be one of the lower levels of nasty I can think of. It’s bad enough taking from people who have plenty, but taking from people who are down is just evil.
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From the consumer protection side instead of mocking.
You know how when you see a commercial for a medicine, legal services or whatnot, and at the bottom is tiny print with disclaimers? The tiny print also applies for making donations to political candidates through a website.
Before I go any further, this advice applies no matter what party a candidate belongs to. The examples are from Trump’s page on the WinRed political donation website last year via a New York Times article, but the article mentions that the Democrat-run ActBlue site also used to do this until they phased it out, except in instances requested.
Look through the entire donation page very carefully. Some of these websites have pre-selected options that make what you intend to be a one-time contribution a repeating donation instead. Here’s an example:
This has the attention-getting colors of red and bright yellow, with black text in bold that has high contrast against the yellow background. That stands out and what it does should be clearly understood, right?
How about these two?
Both of these divert your attention away from the purpose of turning the one-time donation into a repeat. That’s achieved by putting a wall of text in front of the purpose and using words in ALLCAPS to force you to look at them. The important sentences are displayed in a plain font style instead of bold and reduced in size so that they fade somewhat into the yellow background.
The result is that people didn't catch what it would do until they saw it on their bank or credit card statement, their account was frozen due to overdrafts, or they went over the legal limit for making political donations. This is because some of the auto-repeat functions were for weekly donations and some were for monthly donations, and sometimes both were used together.
One person decided to donate $500. It became $3,00 within a month and his utility and rent payments bounced. He had to seek an injunction from his bank and credit cards. Another donated $990 that ballooned to $7,920.
Refunds were given when the donations were disputed, minus the processing fee from them since WinRed is a for-profit political fundraising company. They added that disclaimer once refund demands started spiking after they went for round two and added more pre-checked repeating functions to the site. Look for info about how what percentage you’d be refunded if you disputed your donation. (FYI: ActBlue is a non-profit site so any refunds should be the full amount.)
There’s more Trump-specific results of this practice. The short(-ish) summary is obscured below for those who aren’t interested in seeing what they are.
Before a second pre-checked donation item was added, both the Trump and Biden campaigns were issuing refunds of about 2% of what they took in. Once that happened in June, refunds from Trump’s campaign started climbing and eventually hit $122.7 million by the end of the year, or 12.29% of everything that came in. Between mid-October and the end of the year, they had made over 530,000 refunds for a total of $64.3 million. In contrast, Biden’s campaign issued 37,000 refunds for a total of $21 million during the entire year at an almost flat rate of 2.24%.
Forcing a person to use an opt-out method is called “deceptive design”. It relies on the person to not pay attention to what is going on and relies on other distractions in their already-busy life. The pre-checked donation options were referred internally by the Trump campaign as “money bombs”. A follow-up email is sent about pending repeat donations beforehand, so technically they’re in legal compliance, but as we all know, those can get lost in the information overload we’re subject to every day.
Part of the money Trump raised after the election that he said was to go towards fighting election fraud was actually used to pay these refunds. It became an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters. It can also be viewed as a kind of Ponzi scheme because new money is used to pay old debts instead of helping to build towards what it is stated it will be.
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You know, sometimes all you have to do is wait a little bit and something comes along that is just rife with opportunities for mocking. Case in point, the National Republican Congressional Committee response to Trump’s fundraising tactics being exposed earlier this week.
A Sleazy Fundraiser appears. Sleazy Fundraiser casts Guilt Trip and Intimidation.
Donor feels woozy under the combined one-two punch of Guilt Trip and Intimidation.
A wild RRabbit appears! RRabbit casts Mocking the Scammers. It’s super effective!
Oh, no. Please don’t. Please don’t tell him. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to betray him. All I wanted to do is make sure I had enough money to pay my bills and feed my family.
But you’re right. I see that now. Mr. Trump needs my money more. How can I make it up to him? What if I double my donation? Would that be good enough? No? Okay, triple it. Still not good enough? Then make it a daily donation. That will Mr. Trump happy, right?
It will? Whew, what a relief. Please tell him I support him 100%. And could you do me a favor? Could you ask Mr. Trump if he loves me again? Pretty please? If it’s not too much trouble, that is.
RRabbit casts Mocking the Scammers a second time. It's super effective again!
Oh, woe is me. I’m being threatened with being called a name. But not just any name. It’s such a devastating name. I don’t know how I’ll be able to live with the shame. My life will never be the same. If Mr. Trump doesn’t become president again, I will be to blame.
I’m wounded, wounded, I tell you! To Mr. Trump, I will be true. He’ll never have any reason to doubt me, nor say “et tu”? Only by giving him money will he pull through. Support the red, down with the blue. Milk that cash cow, make it moo. Raise your glass filled with a good ol’ 'Murican brew.
There’s one path to victory, truth be told. Bow before the Trump statue of gold. Give him your attention, that never gets old. If you can’t raise the dosh for your monthly donation, your house will be sold. Mr. Trump will be warm even if you have to be cold.
By the way, the NRCC isn't affiliated with Trump, so any money donated through their site probably won't (or more likely, definitely wouldn't) go to him anyway. And their exclusive offer/friend request to join Trump's new social media network with a "5x" match for any donations is worthless because Trump hasn't done anything beyond talking about the idea.
Wow. I thought you had made those yellow boxes yourself in order to take the piss out of the Republican campaign.
I’ve just discovered that they are real.
I’m completely flabbergasted.
I thought the original ones were deceptive and scummy. These are just … I don’t have the words to describe them (and I have a pretty big vocubulary).