Scam Phone Calls

[vyger]

There are some YouTube videos made by people who do "scam busting". It gets pretty funny. The point of a lot of it is to waste these peoples time. There is one series called "Hello, this is Lenny". Someone made a recording that mimics a real elderly person and the recording answers the phone. It has long pauses and the man appears to responds with random answers to questions asked. I didn't even realize it was a recording at first. They get the people to explain things over and over again when he responds with answers like "sorry I didn't quite get that, could you repeat it?" and they start all over again. The ducks quacking are the give away that it is repeating. Here is one of them :

The next video is a guy who uses a voice changer so he appears to be an elderly woman. They do this scam of transferring money into a bank account. But as soon as it appears and is "by mistake" $4000 instead of $400 he jumps on Amazon and spends it for a mobility scooter. Anyway this guy uses a fake bank account and allows them to access his computer which is set up to monitor what they do and gets the all upset. It's funny. He does a lot of videos like this. If you want to be entertained for a while it's pretty funny.

 

[kashmir64]

My favorite is James Veitch. But he does emails and not phone calls.

 

[Elphaba09]

Tons of fun....isn't it?

I like watching videos of people hacking spammers!

 

[susanm9006]

I just got an new one today. A message left on my cell that they were just giving me a courtesy call that my delivery would arrive tomorrow and asking that I call back to confirm I would be available to receive it. Except of course I have no delivery coming tomorrow. But it definitely is the kind of message I can see lots of people calling back on.

 

[Silver Crazy]

It was..lol.. The long aaaahhh ummm on the phone as the wheels were spinning in her brain was quite funny..lol

Hmmm..quote didnt work.

 

[misty8723]

But not if you give them either no or fake information. And they legally can't hold you to anything without a written agreement. Let them try to take someone to court to try to uphold their scam.

To me, it's not worth it, I just don't answer. But I only mentioned that because the natural inclination if someone asks if they are speaking with so and so is to say "yes."

If I do answer and get that question, I'll say "she's not in right now, can I take a message." Or "who is calling, please?"

 

[kashmir64]

ecause the natural inclination if someone asks if they are speaking with so and so is to say "yes."

This is true. Except scammers have a random auto-dial system and have no idea who owns the phone. They don't have any information until you give it to them. They usually don't even know what state they've called.

I'm not saying you should answer. Not at all. I'm just saying that based on every scammer I've dealt with, I see no harm in messing with them. Just be careful to give them fake info.

 

[lizzie]

I have been noticing that some of the calls I've been getting show up on my caller ID as scam or fraudulent,but I had no clue where that was coming from.Opened my phone bill yesterday (I have Windstream)and turns out it's sponsored by them.So I called them to find out if there was a number we could call to turn in new #'s as we get them.First of all she told me they were offering an international call block for free that blocks the scammers from overseas...like the fake Microsoft ones.I had her to set that up for me...takes 4 hours to become active.They update their scam/fraud call list from a national database every day.I suspect they're getting those updates from the national no call list.So if you call the no call list #-1-888-382-1222...you can get yourself on the list if you're not on it or verify you're still on it.There is also a button to push to file a complaint,which I did and it was very easy.I'd already had 2 this morning and it's one complaint per each time you call.You can also file a complaint online at donotcall.gov. which is also very easy to do.I file complaints that was all the time and they have gotten better.Just thought I'd pass this on.I'm interested to see how this effects the number of calls I get now.