Maybe someone started a bot and it has just kept going. The scammer died but the computer in their basement just keeps on spewing them out.
I’ve been getting actual scam calls for 2-3 years… from some city in India ( although they have been using spoofing tech to hide where the calls really come from ).
I’ve tried hanging up.
I’ve tried putting the phone down and walking away.
I’ve tried playing the 10-hour version of Kars-For-Kids into the phone and walking away.
And I still get these Asshats calling 3-4 times a day.
So, I’ve finally become Pro-active. I know that all of these calls are recorded on their end, so I’ve decided to make sure there are things on the recording that have severe consequences for them.
Evidently their leader, Modi, is quite sensitive, arrogant, and has his secret police listening to all the calls there where his name gets mentioned. Rumor has it that he will have entire families disappeared for showing any dissent or disrespect for him or his rule. From there it was just a matter of learning a few key phrases that I make sure show up on their call recordings. Questions about the sexual habits of Modi, why they hate Modi so much, etc. You know the drill. Besides, they tortured me for years with a chuckle, so now it’s their turn.
The very first time that I tried this, the scammer hung-up the phone in abject fear.
#TheMoreYouKnow
A few days ago I was at the bank waiting in line. The person in front of me, who couldn’t have been older than 50, was completely rattled because he got a call from someone saying they were from the bank (that bank/his bank) and they went through the whole rigamarole of the account has been hacked, this that and the other thing.
What made him concerned was when the people on the phone, claiming to be from the bank, told him NOT to call the bank, NOT to go down there and talk to someone and NOT to turn his computer on for the next 48 hours (not sure, maybe to buy some time before he noticed money missing?). He didn’t understand why someone calling from the bank would tell him not to talk to someone at the bank. He was smart enough to go and talk to someone at the bank.
What’s more worrying, to me, is how often these scammers are getting some of the details correct. Like, it’s one thing for a scammer to call and claim to be from Wells Fargo and hope the person has a Wells Fargo account. But this is just a little tiny credit union with a handful of locations.
Similarly, I got a text message a few weeks ago saying my daughter’s [correctly named small/local credit union] debit card was just used in Los Angeles (we’re in WI) and I need to click on this link. The link being mostly gibberish, with a gibberish domain, but it did include the initials of the credit union.
What was even odder was that when I looked at her account, there was a recent (legit) charge from Los Angeles for DoorDash.
So, how much info did this scammer have? It seems like a stretch to assume they randomly guessed at the credit union and got it right AND that it was just dumb luck they mentioned a charge that just showed up. More importantly, who leaked the info? The bank? Doordash that she ordered through? Taco Bell, where the food was from? Something on her phone?
Most likely, DoorDash or a call center employee who sells info to scammers( or a legit call center (or employees) that scams on the side).
As I said in post #18, my wife’s credit card was compromised right after buying a mattress.
And now our credit card with that same bank has been compromised. . .again. This makes at least four or five times with this card. Luckily, they declined the charges and notified us, but this is ridiculous. There has to be an in-house crook who sells these numbers.
Amazon has blocked my account every day, sometimes multiple times a day, for months now, because of suspicious activity. They inform me via text only, and it’s usually in the wee hours of the night (my phone goes into do not disturb mode though luckily).
It’s always a different random web site I have to visit to resolve it.
Today it was Venmo who suspended my account for suspicious activity. Since I have never created a Venmo account, I’d say any activity would be damn suspicious! 
Amazon and Netflix both for me. Of course, I would never dream of going to the website to check for myself and I always click on strange-looking links.
Must be Central Puget Sound’s turn in the barrel: I got one of those as well. I do have a (rarely-used) Venmo account, but since the text was from the same kind of gibberish source as the Amazon “cancellations” that have been turning up of late it went straight into the digital shitter.
Weird. I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a scam email in my inbox.
My spam box, however, is packed. I guess Gmail is doing a decent job of filtering for me.
This is one of the reasons I have my e-mail set to show the real email address the spam/scam is coming from, not just the one they paste into the From box.
Google is incredibly accurate at spam filtering, way ahead of anything the spammers try to do.
I would welcome our Google overlords to take over the phone networks.
Our national phone system needs a serious upgrade to make ‘spoofing’ impossible.
Practically zero spam gets into my actual inbox. I have a healthy dose on my junk folder but not a ton.
Most banks have Positive Pay for business accounts; you send them a file of the checks, & amounts, you wrote today & they’ll only cash those & send you a ‘suspicious notice’ for anything they get that doesn’t match that, including someone who changes your $ amount.
Well, she’ll sleep better knowing all her money is gone. 
Nit - It’s Fiserv, no ‘e’ at the end. I worked at a place they acquired & worked for them for years.
According to my email, I matched on Tinder overnight. I’m so excited! This could be The ONE; yanno the one who steals all of my money…given that I’ve never been on Tinder.
I have a Google phone and I turned on the screening. I rarely get an unwanted call that rings through. And then I just ignore it since I don’t answer calls I don’t know or expect.
Do Google phones have proprietary screening that is not available on non-Google android phones? I didn’t know that.
I don’t know that if it is limited to Google phones or available on all Androids. On my Pixel, go to the Phone, then Settings. There is a “Spam and Call Screen” option.
Yeah, I have a similar setting on my Samsung, located within the phone app. Hard to know with a Samsung if that’s just the same underlying app. I also get very few spam calls. But I also have Hiya installed, so I have no way to know what’s actually stopping them.
Oddly enough, the best built in spam filter I have is on my nearly 30 year old AOL account.
They mentioned that to us, but it’s they charge for it (plus, if you miss anything, it’ll get treated like a bad check by whoever you gave it to). Personally, I found it insulting that they want ME to pay to make sure checks that don’t even have my signature on them can’t be withdrawn from our account. In fact, one of the checks didn’t even have a signature on it at all.
I’ve yet to find a way to make my phone block spam. I have every spam caller block I can find turned on and most calls still get through. I even told it to block unknown/restricted callers and anyone not on my contact list and spam it still gets through.