My fault, I kept a FB account. I didn’t want to lose contact with distant family.
Today was the first time that one of those stupid ads between posts ( one with a pic of a little dog standing up to a big dog… one that I never should have clicked…) locked up my screen… saying it was a locked by Microsoft for my safety.
I got passed it easily enough… but just heads up: FB is no longer safe…
It hasn’t been safe for a long time.
Wouldn’t the lack of feeling be Diabetes, not Dementia…? Of course he might have had both.
It’s both.
Lately I’ve been getting a a few email messages saying “order confirmation” or something like that, with a file attachment. Yeah, sure, I’ll download that right now!
The people aren’t even TRYING. There is no attempt to makeit look like a legitimate site, and the email address is always some random gmail address.
Not a scam, but I’ve taken to reporting as spam emails from a company with whom I have no business relationship. There was a vaguely interesting-looking ad on the New York Times, I clicked on it, it is a legitimate business, but other than clicking, I did NOTHING. No “send me a coupon” or anything.
Immediately I started getting marketing emails from them. Every. Single. Day.
Unsubscribe? Hell no - I didn’t subscribe in the first place. I’ve been reporting every one as spam.
The other day my mom answered a call from “Comcast” and, when told that her account was $500 past-due, gave them her credit card number, and when the charge was declined, gave them another credit card number (also declined, thankfully).
Quantity over quality.
If they send ten million of those and only get a hundredth of a percent of people falling for it, that’s still a thousand people falling for it. That could net them a good chunk of money.
When you have technology doing things for you, you don’t have to do it with any kind of skill or care. Just automate it so that it’s done enough times that statistically speaking it will work enough times to pay off. And whoever is doing this is anonymous and probably somewhere unreachable (or close enough) that it’s also low risk.
Here’s one that is interesting. I need a battery replacement for my iPhone. It’s $89 at the Apple Store and much more expensive at the local repair places. I saw that Best Buy Geek Squad does it too so I wanted a price check.
I Googled Geek Squad and the first hit was something with (now that I look back) a similar name with a toll free number. I asked for a price check and they correctly verified my name and quoted $40. Then the guy, with an Indian accent, asked if I ever shared my IP Address with anyone and said that my IP Address has been used in five different locations including Ohio and….
That’s when I hung up the phone.
Bought a video card off Amazon last week, was due to arrive Monday. Seller said the package shipped last Wednesday; USPS said a label was printed but they haven’t received the package yet. Monday came and went, seller updated delivery to Tuesday. Tuesday came and went, seller updated to Friday. I was suspicious when USPS didn’t even have the package, the delays confirmed it. And the seller now has 60 1-star reviews that it’s just a bullshit front. Amazon originally said I could request a refund if the package didn’t arrive tomorrow, but after I talked to support yesterday, they’ve already refunded my money. So I’m not out any money, and an actual video card is showing up from another seller today, but I’m annoyed.
Fucking scammer motherfucker.
I have worked in online casinos as a software dev. I was not involved in the marketing (aka spam) part of the business, but it was accepted that a 1% return was pretty good.
And that is with an actual tangible product, that actually pays real money from time to time.
I see no logical issue with your maths, but I think you underestimate the number of fucking stupid people. The casinos I worked for made millions of dollars off stupid people.
I was intentionally lowballing it. That’s why said if it was only that tiny percentage falling for it, it would still probably be profitable, but in reality I’m sure it’s much higher as you say.
I mean, I work in IT support and I’m sure more than 1% of the people I support would fall for it based solely on my interactions with them and some of the things they do and tell me. And these are professionals, relatively educated folks who use computers as part of their everyday jobs.
One: I pay for Prime and filter search results for Prime. Two: As much as possible, I choose “fulfilled by Amazon”. Three: buy from a known, reputable company.
I have to wonder, what that “seller” is trying to do. Maybe hoping that someone won’t challenge the non-delivery, so they get a little cash before Amazon shuts them down?
As much as possible that is what I do as well.
Never obtain a phone number for a major company, especially a bank or credit card company, from a Google search.
The top hits are frequently scammers. Google doesn’t care.
Yeah. It was a sponsored ad and the top result.
I called them later from my Google Voice number to fuck with them a little and they told me to just go into the store. I guess that they couldn’t get my name from that number so their scam wouldn’t work.
Reminds me of when I got a call to tell me that there were some iPhones ordered in my name being held in New York, and I had to give some info to authorize them being released. I said that’s interesting, and asked how they knew they were for me. I asked them what my name was. They were a bit confused and then just hung up on me.
That kind of scam is reliant on the greed of the target. They’re hoping that the person on the other end is so excited that they’re getting something for free that they’ll play along and not ask many questions. It’s the same mentality as the classic Nigerian Prince scam.
Your story fits the old adage that you can’t scam an honest person. I maybe lose a little sympathy for someone trying to get free electronics. In my recent case they were trying to fool a naive person by presumably selling them something or stealing their credit card information.
I just received a call from a supposed police support charity. This was one of those calls from a computer pretending to be a live person, so I asked, “Is this a human being?” which it didn’t understand, so I tried, “Are you a robot?” It claimed to be a live human being, so I tried asking, “What is two plus two?” but the voice on the other end either can’t do very simple math or lied about being human.
I want to thank you for this. I’ve been getting harassed by “recruiters” from India supposedly offerring good paying jobs if I’d give them all my personal information. And of course they Never have an office in America… < eyeroll >
And of course 4 different names offer up the same email offer/lie with the demand for SS#, DOB, and other identitity theft key points highlighted in yellow.
Thanks to you, I was able to send the following:
.
.
.
Daniyal,
Three different people from your office have spammed me for the exact same job w/i the last hour.
First there was “Chodu Bhagat”.
Then there was “Bahen Chod”.
Finally there was “Backar Chodu”.
No means No.
(I sure hope you people at Panzer get your shit together before cows get involved…)