Just received a call from Louisiana, well that's what Caller I D said. Answered and guy called saying he was from the IT department. Yeah we've heard them going around and yes his accent was pretty bad. Said he was calling about my computers operating system. I asked what type of computer I had. Sorry I'm not in the mood to play their little shit game. He said it didn't matter I have Windows OS. I asked what version, said it didn't matter, was the reply. I started on him like crap to the wall. Either he tells me what 'type' of computer I have else he ain't getting crap. Also what OS and I rattled off all the OS's to include linux. Guess he figured out that he didn't no crap after all and hung up.
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had one of these
I had a call like this. This kind of stuff makes me so angry, even if it was an obvious fake.
I fix computers in my free
I fix computers in my free time. A lady I built a computer for fell for this type of scam. I felt bad for her but she knew what she did was the wrong thing and called me immediately. I got her system clean and showed her some of the most common types of scams. I hope she learns from this. Hehe guess I'm just waiting for the next phone call.
And as my mother told me, when I asked if people were getting dumber. She told me no, that I was just getting smart enough to see how dumb some people really are.
Scamming calls
A friend told me that the scammers are supposed to be limited to seven minutes per call, so nowadays I keep them talking for about 20 minutes before I tell them to f*€k off.
One good way to keep them going is to ask for their company address. One guy was so dumb. In the UK we have addresses that start with the house number and then the street name, here is Switzerland it is the other way round. And then he had no idea how we have post codes in the various countries (post codes are zip codes), some countries have four digits, some have five, some have combinations of letters and numbers. So far not one of the dumb scammers have demonstrated an actual knowledge of this. Then one told me the company he was calling from was in South Milwaukee. When I asked for the zip code he told me "5234879". My SiL lives in Iowa and HER zip starts with "52" - so for that I kept him on the line for another 25 minutes, asking him for details of which of my 6 computers was the one talking to him and so on.
We were all giggling like hell at my end and eventually I had to hang up on him before my laughter got the better of me.
my other half had a call like
my other half had a call like this last week, she had fun with them, asked if it was a bug showing online right then, then informed them her computer was in for repair (it was) they need a better lie, then she told them to get an honest job the criminal b**tards.
I've only had this type of bs call once, and i really was very impolite, lots of words that would have had my mouth washed out with soap 40 years ago, then hung up that time :)
We often get calls like this ...
... and we both just hang-up or tell them to bugger off so I've no idea what the scam is, apart from wasting my time that is. What happens if you're stupid enough to go along with them?
Unlike the email scams which are very cheap to perpetrate, phone calls aren't free - at least not in the UK and certainly not from the Indian sub-continent where the accents seem to indicate they originate. The Nigerian emails 'We want your bank details so you can help me claim a large sum of cash that's hanging in a tied up account somewhere' are easy to spot but what do these do?
Robi
Software
They have you sit by your computer and download software from one of their sites which they then try and get you to cough up money. If you don't they start deleting your files right in front of you.
Their claim is that they inform the victim the they detected a virus on your computer. My reply (if I didn't loose my temper) was to ask why they were violating my privacy by hacking into my computer in the first place to even get such a notice.
Oh and they wouldn't even say who their IT department worked for. They try and push back very hard.
Thanks.
Not much of a threat then because there's no way I'd download their poxy software. If anyone put a hex on my PC by encoding all the data and held it to ransom I'd tell 'em to take a running jump and reformat it. Most of my stuff is backed up and that that isn't could be mostly down-loaded but it would be a pita.
Robi
IT Scammers
We get these in UK. They never know what your Op system is as they are working on the principle of right 5 times out of 10 Fortunately we can opt out of most marketing/call centre phone traffic using a system called TPS which has legal backing and criminal penalties for contravention. Sadly it does not work on outside UK traffic.
It is the Internet scams that can be nasty. Even though I hide behind a full Norton firewall etc I don't deliberately open them and usually browse in terra incognita using Google in Incognito mode for its apparent ability to dump even the scamming "lock out" screens which demand money with menaces to unlock your PC when you turn it off and re boot. Let alone its refusal to let anything change anything in your PC without very specific approval
Nightjar
Most of these over the phone
Most of these over the phone scammers are making a good deal of their money off of elderly people. Once people start getting on in years they become increasingly vulnerable to this kind of deception. The scammers know it too, once you hit around 60 you can expect their calls to pick up big time. You would be surprised by how many older people have been scammed by them. Chances are that you know an elderly person you has been taken advantage of or at least know someone who has had it happen to a family member. You don't hear about it because most times the older person won't tell anyone, they are to ashamed to let anyone know what happened to them. It's hard to tell your adult children, who you taught how to manage money and not get scammed, that you fell for something that a decade or two earlier you would never have fallen for.
I can speak from personal experience to this, since it happened to my grandmother. (and as it turns out to about 90% of her church friends when she started asking around, pride kept them from warning each other about it.) The horrible part is that she used to be incredibly sharp when it comes to money, she was vice president of her local bank. She could see through bullshit a mile way, and explain the political situation of the nation at the same time.
It sucks when people get old...
You know when I was a youngster ...
... back in the 40s and 50s there weren't any of those computer thingies for everybody to play with so I built radios. Anyway in the 60s I started playing with them at ICT and GEC over here and we, well we invented them, I suppose. Of course now I'm an old dodderer of 74 I am very vulnerable not like all those sharp kids who don't even know what a PN junction or a bi-stable is or can't count in hexadecimal or write assembler.
Don't put all old people in the same basket. It certainly sucks to be old but the main problem is pain not brain - at least in my case. My partner has been the treasurer of the local cycle club for over 25 years and she can bring up the current balance sheet at the touch of the keyboard and handles £1000s/years in cash and cheques, so she's quite clued up too but she is 9 months young than I am :)
The scammers make money from ignorant people (which doesn't mean stupid BTW) and they can be old, young or middle-aged.
Robi
Stuck my foot in it didn't I?
Stuck my foot in it didn't I? Sorry, I didn't mean my post to sound the way it did. I'm just projecting my personal experiences onto the world. Your right about them targeting everyone, irrespective of age. My own mother almost got taken in by the exact kind of scam talked about in this blog, and she's no old dodderer like yourself. :P
My grandmother has a decade on you and has been in declining health. when she was as young as you are, she could have could given you partner a run for her money, and that's without using any computer. It's her body giving out on her that has caused so much trouble, she has collapsed and had to be hospitalized multiple times from...well a number of things, but the biggest was liver function stopping from dehydration, which was caused, or at least contributed to by her high blood presser medication. Those kinds of major medical situations seem to take a lot out of people especially those who's body aren't as strong as they once were.
I hope I'm in as good a shape as you are when I'm your age, and can tell youngens off when they make over broad generalizations. Since I already have mental problems the thought of being in a condition like my grandmother where you just aren't able to grasp things like you normally would is rather disconcerting.
*As a side note, this is an example of how good the members of BCTS, and Erin & team who enforce the rules are, if I had been on another site I could have gotten flamed.
No, not really.
Though I do get slightly irritated at people thinking anyone with grey hair is an idiot. Our local PC World used to employ youngster with charisma by-passes who assumed I was thick but they've much improved in the past few years - probably realising that it affected sales.
Sadly my father went a bit gaga in the last couple of years of his life. It almost broke my heart when he couldn't operate the little tape recorder I got him to play talking books when just a few years before he's been selling and repairing them. So sure some oldies are vulnerable but by no means all.
I wouldn't dare flame you, anyway 'cos Erin would have my guts for garters :) And quite right, too.
Robi
Two of the smartest people I
Two of the smartest people I have known in my whole life fit in the category of 'elderly'. The first was my grandfather (other side of the family from the before mentioned grandmother) He knew a half dozen different languages, had served in all three major branches of the military (At least I believe that is right, I know he was an Army Ranger in Korea where he spent time as a POW, and he was a pilot in the air force.) and he pretty much knew something about everything, having traveled to most places in the world. I could go own for hours about him, or pages in this case, but I restrain myself before people start thinking I'm making stuff up from those 'most interesting man in the world' commercials. Sadly he passed away a little less than a decade ago, I still really miss him, and wish he was around so I could learn more from him.
The other smartest person is the grandfather of my cousin. He was one of the pioneers in the field I work in. To this day you can still find equipment and such used that were patented by him, no one having been able to improve on his original design/idea. He's almost 90 now and we still call him up when we need help figuring out how to fix a problem. A few years back I would take a couple evenings out of the week to take 'classes' from him at the little electronic/radio/I-have-no-idea-what-else personal lab he build on his property. I just wish I was smart enough to understand half the things he was trying to teach me.
So yeah, gray hair does not equal idiot, not by a long shot....of course the fact that I have noticed a few gray hairs (which I am much to young to have) on my own head might be biasing me here. :P
Bravo Robi
although having been playing with computers since the late 60s, I suspect that I'm not the average vulnerable "over 60".
I do worry about my 85 year old parents who barely know how to read their email. We've told them not to do anything on the computer without consulting me or my niece who lives near them... and they're careful enough with their money that they aren't going to give a credit card or bank details over the phone.
Scammers who bug me are the "2 minute survey" that is actually a product marketing call. Or the "Police blah blah blah league" calling for donations. Or the Jehovah's Witnesses who knock on the door. I have thought about having a debate with them regarding their superstitions but haven't been in the mood during one of their visits yet.
Hey! I said they would call
Hey! I said they would call you if you're over 60, not that you were vulnerable. Vulnerable has got to be, like, 62? :P
The calls became a real problem for my grandmother, she would get a dozen of them a day. Of course that might have something to do with the fact that my father and uncle started calling one particularly obnoxious scammer back every hour or so, 24 hours a day, and giving him shit. Eventually the scammer ended up blacking their calls. there is a sweet irony in that somewhere, though we did need to get a call blacker for my grandmother to block all the different callers. I guess the scammers communicate and look out for each other, who knows, maybe they even have a union... "Organization for the Advocacy of Nigerian Princes," maybe? :)
The Advocacy?
Sadly all to true. The "Charities" even the legitimate ones sell donor lists to anyone who will buy the rate used to be about 1000 names for £100). I gave to a Red Cross disaster appeal some 20 years ago and they used a second name that is on my credit card but I never use in their thank you. Since then I must have had over 200 different charities and marketing organisations of steadily decreasing repute contact me using that name! Likewise there is according to the evidence at a trial I followed also a thriving black market in scamming "donor" phone number lists.
Nightjar
I donated some money to a
I donated some money to a radio program that I particularly enjoyed listening to on a Pacifica radio station.
Nowhere was there any notification that my information was _not_ private - I started receiving all SORTS of advertising from every moronic bleeding heart liberal organization known. All of them, of course, trying to get me to cough up money for their cause, some wanting me to physically show up, etc. (it even included the NAACP!)
It took me a lot of time (two to three years), and probably more money in stamps than I gave in donations, to get those people to remove me from their lists - and to make clear that they obtained their mailing list from an unethical organization that had not been given permission to do so.
Next time I donate money, I'll be giving _cash_, with a handwritten receipt - and I'll tell them why.
edit - How I knew they were from there? They all misspelled my name the same way.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.