This is something everyone–not only the Teeming Millions–should know about. I found these in a newsletter a yard customer of mine–a former city librarian–received:
#1:
ANOTHER SCAM! NEVER DIAL AREA 809
Never, never, never respond to e-mails, phone calls, or web pages that tell you to call an “809” number. If you do, it could cost you megabucks!
This scam is rapidly spreading. It works like this: You find a message on your answering machine, pager or e-mail to call an 809 number about a family member who is ill, [has] died, or has been arrested, or to let you know you’ve won a valuable prize.
AT&T reports that if you return the call a long recorded message or other ruse will be used to keep you on the line a long time because it’s costing you $2,425 a minute! [:eek:]
Area 900 blocking will not stop this scam. Area 809 is in the British Virgin Islands. U. S. consumer protection rules do not apply. You will owe this charge on your phone bill. Fighting these charges would disrupt your life for years, and you will lose!
#2:
A NEW MAIL THEFT TRICK
Mail theft has a new twist. Thieves are stealing the all too identifiable boxes of new checks sent us by banks. Then all they need [to do] is to copy the account owner’s signature from one [stolen] check being mailed in payment, say, of a utility bill.
Never leave your outgoing mail attached to your mail box with a clothes pin for the mailman to pick up. Deposit it in a post office drop box. And don’t have your checks mailed to you. Pick them up at the bank.
–from CalPERS [newsletter of The Public Employees Association of California], 2001, Volume 2, issue 3; Editor: Mil Pribble. May-June. Both items page 79.
I checked out that 809 area code thing thru Snopes and it’s true:
That link to Snopes is almost in the same category of evil as the 809 scam. It launched Java, threw up an “undervert” in a window below my current window, and lord knows what it would have done if I was using IE instead of netscape.
It is a clear sign of the degeneration of the web that a site dedicated to debunking urban legends is now whoring itself out to disrespectable advertisers with disgusting web tricks.