Have you ever dealt with scammers? I just did. (Somewhat long post)

[compl3x]

All you have done is given him pointers on how to make his conversation better for the next person her calls

 

Well Done </sarcasm>

 

If they are randomly calling people and hoping someone will bite they wouldn't have any info on them. They can't improve their tactic if they don't have the relevant info. He articulated himself rather well, he just didn't have any info on me. How he got my number, I don't know.

 

After reading compl3x's post id say the only persons who time was wasted was his. The scammer has come off better here.

 

 

How? They gained nothing. As I said, I was sitting at my desk going about the things I would have otherwise done. I soaked up his time by playing along. I lost nothing. I didn't take time out of my day to string him along. Had I other things to do I would have called him a dropkick and hung up. 

[Haggis Veteran]

If they are randomly calling people and hoping someone will bite they wouldn't have any info on them. They can't improve their tactic if they don't have the relevant info. He articulated himself rather well, he just didn't have any info on me. How he got my number, I don't know.

 

 

As you say though

 

4 major banks

 

now if i was to call 100 people how many would i guess one of the 4 banks correct on?

 

 

you should never point out what a scammer does wrong as they then just fix it on the next call and try to improve there script

 

If you really wanna mess with scammers and make a small difference then pm me :)

[CrashG]

I think the card services one is MUCH more wide spread. I just did a search on my Gmail voice mail log from my voice mail server. Everytime someone calls my house / business the voice mail server records the caller ID and message and text messages me the information and emails my phone call account along with the message. So I did a search for card services.

 

Yeah, those people have been around for awhile. I think they are branching out with some kind of pain cream and a Life Alert type device scam now.

[neo158]

I think this is a great example of scammers being scammed:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjKjyMKj3n4

[Soldiers33]

If you become too hostile or profane they tend to hang up. I wanted to string him along as long as possible.

 

Calling him an effing scumbag bastid would have ended the call in 12 seconds. He expects as much. It doesn't hurt him how much I detest him, he just moves onto the next victim. Wasting his time if far more enjoyable and amusing.

would have been more fun if you gave him false info. Thats what I do when I recieve emails requesting information update. Im sure they feel like idiots once they read my responses.

[MikeChipshop Member]

All i ever do is say that i'm going to put them on hold while i track down my details, then stick the phone next to my speaker, play them some pretty gnarly music and see how long they stick around.

Pick up the phone every now and again and you'll keep them hanging on longer. My record is at 4 hours and that was also a bank scammer.

After reading compl3x's post id say the only persons who time was wasted was his. The scammer has come off better here.

 

Really? Seems to me Compl3x was doing what he would have been doing that day any way. As he also says, the longer he has that person on the phone, the longer they're not scamming someone else.

[CrashG]

I think I've found a way to stop them from calling me. I know there is a free service called nomorobo, but your phone provider needs to support Simultaneous Ring for it to work, since mine does not (thanks Charter) I found a program called PhoneTray (the older free version 1.39) and got a usb dialup voice modem (HiRO H50113). If you're not in my whitelist you get the SIT disconnected tone. The phone rings only once and they're zapped. Only had it setup a couple of days, but seems to be pretty effective so far.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

I dealt with a guy last week. He phoned up saying that he was part of Microsoft security and said that my computer in the house was transmitting viruses. I asked him which machine, seeing as we have several in the house, and his response was "the one running Windows."

I played along with him for a couple of steps, but I couldn't be bothered to use a Windows machine to fully go through everything, so I finally stopped him. "Can I tell you something?"

"Yes sir, of course."

"I work in IT. I know that Microsoft does not call users to fix computers."

He paused for a moment and then changed his tune. "Oh no, sir. I'm not from Microsoft, I'm phoning as part of your computer's service support team."

"Well in that case you should be able to tell me the laptop that I own." There was another pause before he tried to change his backstory a bit more, and I realised I couldn't be bothered with him. "Listen, I know what you're trying to do. You tell me that my machine is transmitting a virus, then you attempt to get access to my machine so that you can try and show me all of these viruses on the machine. It's not going to work, and I really suggest that you give up trying this sort of thing."

He hung up after that. I'm expecting them to phone again soon though, so next time I'll make the effort of opening a Windows machine just to play around with him a bit more.

[Hum]

I ask them what they are wearing, then tell them I'm not wearing anything.

[francescob]

I wish somebody mass-produced those arduino call-blocking thingies but telemarketers and scammers can get new numbers in no time, I bought cordless phones that allowed blocking calls with private caller id but they're switching to VOIP (that instead of using private caller id just shows no caller id) to elude the block

[Gabe84]

Never dealt with a scammer, I was scammed years ago, I was like 13 and two guys approached me and a friend and asked us for money for some AIDS charity, later that day we found out that charity never existed, they took our ice cream money basically they were the kinder version of a bully; although sometimes I feel like answering to some Nigerian prince and waste their time, actually there's a website dedicated to scambaiting http://www.419eater.com/

[Rohdekill]

OP - Sorry, I have no similar stories to tell.  See, I'm smart enough to use caller ID, screen my calls and not answer unless I know who it is.

[GotBored]

From Australia and also on the no-call list but still seem to get a scam call about once every 2-3 months, last one I got was completely automated and took my name from my voice mail message and copied that part of my voice mail message to relay my name back to me. Then it asked for details and it had a button press menu to go through the options like when you call a company with automated phone systems.

 

There are two major telecom companies in Australia (Optus and Telstra) and they guessed I was using Telstra which was correct but i never give information over the phone and just hung up. I later called up Telstra and they said they do have automatic call systems to contact clients but they didn't have any call outs logged for my account. I reported it to scamwatch and gave timestamps of the calls, scamwatch confirmed it was a new scam.

 

Another one about a month ago was a guy with a strong English accent who said he was from my bank (He knew which bank I was with). But I thought it was odd getting a call from an international number from my local Australian bank.. Something about bank error with my account and he wanted me to confirm banking details. I just said I would call my bank to confirm and he got really ###### off, started cursing at me (probably didn't get his quota of scams that day) and I just hang up on him.

[compl3x]

OP - Sorry, I have no similar stories to tell.  See, I'm smart enough to use caller ID, screen my calls and not answer unless I know who it is.

 

 

 

But my home phone is used so infrequently, you see, I don't have a need to indulge in paranoid screening of every call. The home phone rings, I answer it. Only a handful of people have my home phone number, mostly older relatives, and it is used as a secondary number if a mobile number can't be reached in the case of an emergency.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Oh dear, one of us wasn't even trying today...

"Microsoft" phoned me again a moment ago. Same spiel as before, my "main" computer running Windows was reporting lots of errors. Unemployment breeds boredom, so I grabbed a Windows machine and booted it up like she asked. She then transferred me to a "senior technician."

'Ok sir, I'm just going to guide you through a couple of steps so that you can see the errors.'

'Sure. Would you like me to check the event viewer?'

'...yes sir. Have you already gone through these steps before?'

'Yep. You've tried scamming me about 10 times before this.'

'Ok. Go ###### yourself, you bloody ######.'

I now expect one of two things to happen. Either the house phone number will be put on a blacklist - something I doubt - or I will get another phone call sometime soon to do it all again.

[iogbrideau]

Here it is almost a daily occurence and they sometimes get the right bank too! Then again they usually just go for one of the biggest banks here in Canada. Seeing as it's almost a daily occurence I don't even bother and as soon as I hear "Credit Card", or "bank", or even "microsoft" I will just hang up on them.

[Som]

I was told by a customer of mine a couple of years ago that the Microsoft scammers rang them and used my name as a reference in their evil deeds.  Thought it was funny. They rang my father once while I was there and i told them to feck off, wish I had had the patience to toy with them..

[Cnónna]

I wish somebody mass-produced those arduino call-blocking thingies but telemarketers and scammers can get new numbers in no time, I bought cordless phones that allowed blocking calls with private caller id but they're switching to VOIP (that instead of using private caller id just shows no caller id) to elude the block

 

I've a set of phones with BT call guardian on them, only lets through calls which are on the stored memory, all international numbers are blocked. any with held numbers or numbers not on the stored memory are automatically answered by the phone asking them to announce their name and then press a key. only then are they put through, you then get played the recording of them announcing their name and can choose to reject the call or block the number altogether.

 

[Intersect]

[T3X4S]

OP - Sorry, I have no similar stories to tell.  See, I'm smart enough to use caller ID, screen my calls and not answer unless I know who it is.

That doesnt make you smart though

[T3X4S]

There was another thread about these clowns not too long ago.

They finally called me about a month ago.  I put it on speaker so my fiance could listen in.  I followed their steps up until they wanted me to connect to a site so they could remote in.

Then I told them the site was giving me an ID-10T error (he didnt get the joke)

I then asked him to say "hello thank you for calling" - he wouldnt

I then gave my best typical middle eastern accent (the typical support accent with the fake american name) - he didnt think it was funny because he said my father was a bastard.

My fiance and I were literally laughing our asses off.  (I do a pretty good indian accent)

[Sir Topham Hatt]

Tell them you hope they're not going to be long as you're in [pick country on other side of the world] on holiday.