Now I feel kind of bad for stringing the scammers along.
Ask them if they're blinking in morse code.
I've heard about something like this, maybe even here? There are so many kinds of spam/scams out there, it's crazy.
1. Probably more than weekly (but diminishing recently, now that I think of it, so maybe the crackdown in the article had a noticeable effect!) I get a text or WhatsApp message that seems like a random person I don't know saying hi, maybe a with a hot woman's picture, and I assume it's one of these. Occasionally I'll engage mockingly, but ever since I read about the kidnappings, I've stopped. Maybe instead I should send them a link to some hotline on escaping trafficking.
2. A couple months ago I got a scam attempt that seemed surprisingly clever. Someone called me and identified themselves as Verizon fraud prevention or something like that and asked if I had approved a purchase of something in some city I've rarely or never been in. I said no. They said, OK, great, someone made a fraudulent attempt to buy something with your account, we recommend resetting your password, please click approve on the link we'll send you. I almost did, but there was a pop-up on the link saying that Verizon staff will never ask for your password, and this seemed a little too close to that.
3. Some days, Cassandane gets a ridiculous flurry of calls from something or other that spoofs phone numbers in different states with exactly the same message multiple times per day, some bullshit about a made-up fee. It happens so often, there's no way it's an effective scam. I've read the factoid that scammers deliberately include mistakes in their approaches to weed out smart people, but these calls are coming so quickly that even if they got someone dumb enough to fall for the first phone call, they'd be interrupted by the second one. I figure the software in the call center must be malfunctioning or badly configured.
I basically never get spam text messages or WhatsApps. I've had about 8 spam calls in my life, I think. My experience with spam has been pretty much all emails and the occasional instagram DM.
I get weekly or perhaps more frequent text messages like "Hi we met last week" or "You're in my contacts and I forgot who you are" or whatever.
Speaking of call centers and scams, this week I cancelled Comcast (not actually using cable, plus live network events (we don't have over-the-air here without a really giant antenna) like the Oscars finally moving to streaming (even if they hilariously botched it this year), and switching internet to AT&T Fiber). Of course you can't cancel online. Google seems to suggest there's two good ways to cancel. The first one is to call and say you're cancelling because you're going to jail, which skips the whole flow chart they're supposed to go through because there's nothing they can sell you. The other one is to just go to a local store. I went with the latter, and indeed it was super easy. Waited 10 minutes because it was crowded, and then got cancelled right away with no attempt at all to sell us anything.
The contrast between phone and in-person is remarkable and makes me wonder what exactly is going on. I have two theories. The first is that the time of American employees (and the real estate at the store!) is valuable so they don't want to spend it on low-likelihood attempts at sales, while on the phone it's people being paid next-to-nothing so they don't care if it wastes a bunch of their time. The second is that they don't want loud confrontations in the store in front of the other customers.
3,5: I knew scam call centers existed. But you'd think the interview process would be honest, leading to a robust merit-based series of promotions based on hard work and strong virtues.
Wouldn't the overlords want to promote a culture with a healthy work-home balance, thus preventing burnout and retention issues?
I'm just reasoning things out from first principles.
I've read the factoid that scammers deliberately include mistakes in their approaches to weed out smart people
I do wonder if that space is now fully occupied. If the Nigerian prince is for people in the top percentile of gullibility, the new thing of "Hey, did you hear from Jim? - Oh, wrong number, you're not Nate, haha! - But while we're talking..." seems like for top decile.
7.2: The deadly tentacles of the cancel culture cthulu popping up in a new place!
7.3: The grundriss of the labor theory of cancel culture
Damn it. https://jabberwocking.com/health-update-100/
I'll put up a post later today.
I don't get the kinds of scam messages that are mentioned in the article. Or at least they don't get past the spam filters. Mostly I get fake charities and ethnic affinity scams that I don't know the details of because I don't speak Chinese or Hindi. I suppose some of the political fundraising texts I get are also scams.
OT: I have just had to certify that I'm not a "habitual drunkard."
I don't drink enough to be an alcoholic, but I do drink enough that I feel the need to occasionally tell people I'm not an alcoholic.
My stomach saved me from having to lie on the form.
||
excoriated by a prudish chronicler for popularizing shoes with long, curly toes|>
I was just in the hospital for the better part of a month and was surprised that I could be shocked by the depravity of a scam: cold-calling hospital room land lines. They all operated thusly (I was bored and angry enough to try to play along): an AI agent would offer a guess at a first name and ask if I'd received the Medicare Advantage paperwork they'd mailed me. Acting confused, I'd offer a different first name, then they'd in turn act like they were looking at the wrong file, claim they had the right one now, then try to obtain PII.
Unclear if this was a phishing expedition or a scammy leadgen for an actual Medicare Advantage provider, but regardless: the depravity of cold calling hospital rooms in a transparent attempt to target vulnerable populations at their most vulnerable moment took me aback.
The seems like adverse selection for an insurance company. Probably a scam.
For some reason, I've gotten into a list of Medicare eligible people and this has gotten me so many calls.
Some guy kept calling and wanting me to list all my medications. Which I can see how that could be a good scam as I know the expense can be astounding. But my drugs are cheap even without insurance.
I read a piece semi-recently where the author was calling Apple about a broken airpod or something - like she googled the number and initiated the call - and while the person was helping her, they said something like, "Hey there's a weird alert flag on your bank card. Do you want me to transfer you to them when we're done here?" and she said yes. Husband walks in as she's mid-giving sensitive info and is like, "Wtf?" except more cinematically: "Ask him what he sees outside his window! ask him!" which revealed it was not the local st.louis bank.
Anyway, the whole thing seemed like the kind of thing I could stumble into if I was tired and run down, which felt scary.
(The entry point being a scam Google search result for the apple helpline, which popped up as the big correct one, if you didn't click through to the actual site.)
At least Google AI can prevent that kind of scam by making the top lines of a search result be absolutely shit.
I have noticed that Google search has started responding to searches for phone numbers by offering you results for some other phone numbers as well, just in case, because after all they're phone numbers and one is much like another.
Statistically, it's probably a perfectly good number.
The time when you could usefully use Google as a reverse phone book was brief and ended years ago.
7: The first one is to call and say you're cancelling because you're going to jail, which skips the whole flow chart they're supposed to go through because there's nothing they can sell you.
I'd be cautious about this. I was just looking someone up on one of the databases we use to verify people's identities, and was shocked to see they had a murder beef in New Jersey. I looked again twice and realized that the first name was two letters off, and it had been added to the presumably non homicidal client's profile by accident. So, be careful what you cop to, the Internet is forever, and not double checked as much as one would hope.
I can't imagine visiting New Jersey and not murdering someone. Like going to Florida without doing meth or Arizona and not seeing the Grand Canyon.
28: I had a 2-day hassle recently where a client had been hacked, he went online to get Best Buy's phone number, got sent to a scammer and had his computer "cleaned" for $500. He was so adamant that he had not been scammed that I wound up calling Best Buy myself, and emailing our cyber security department just to get evidence to convince him it wasn't really Best Buy he had dealt with.
Just to review:
1. Turn on 2FA and text alerts for all your financial accounts
2. Update passwords frequently
3. Don't use the same password for your financial accounts as anything else
4. Don't click on anything you weren't planning to click on
5. If you have ANY fraud activity, let ALL your financial institutions know about it.
Ok, here's a weird fraud thing I never understood. At some point there appeared on my credit card two purchased and immediately refunded American Airline tickets that I didn't purchase. I called the bank and had it quickly cancelled and reissued, but I still have no idea how it happened or why they were immediately refunded, and what the scam was.
The so-called "pig butchering" scams are frequently run out of those trafficked-employee call centers. It's pretty depressing to think about all the lonely people in the US being scammed by exploited people in South/East Asia. There's no limit to people's gullibility either. People with long, prestigious careers behind them lose a spouse and get so lonely they will fall for any line of ridiculous bullshit you can imagine -- suitcases full of gold bars that are held up in customs, letters from European royalty, passionate online affairs with 70's rock legends, murder and intrigue at the highest levels of the federal government -- it's just crazy.
38: if you had gotten a call about it, I might suspect it was the set up for a scam where you are told there was an error, you were over- refunded and now you have to pay back the company in Amazon gift cards.
I don't use Amazon gift cards for anything but gifts and to pay taxes.
There's a Tesla parked here, illegally and in the way, with "DT heart EM" written in the dust on the trunk.
There's always someone parked illegally in that spot this time of day though.