I have (had) an cousin that was about 70 yo fall for this. She asked me to fix/look at her computer (which I really don’t do any more). She said that she got a call from Time Warner and she was furious that they turned off her internet when they had no reason to do so. A few questions and I found that they didn’t turn off her ‘internet’ they blocked all access to her computer (ransomware). So more questions showed that they had her download something and after that she could no longer use her computer.
I explained to her multiple times, in multiple ways that it was a scam. Her rebuttal was that they were from Time Warner and how would a ‘scammer’ know she had TW (even when I explained that since so many people have TW, they can just say it and most people will say yes…it’s like a scammer saying they’re from Visa).
Since I had no intention of drive 45 minutes (each way) to her house and back plus spending a few hours watching various malware removal programs do their thing while i sat there and did nothing, I suggested she either take her laptop to Best Buy/Geek Squad or, since it was 5 or so years old, just cut her losses and buy a new one.
She continued to insisted that it was [legit] TWC and wend on and on about how terrible it was of them to lock up her computer. I even tried explaining that if it was, in fact, TWC, they’d only cut her internet, not disable the computer.
She’s a smart woman, but she went to her grave absolutely livid that Time Warner Cable did this to her.
The best advice I could give her was that when something like this happens, hang up and call them directly…and never download anything they tell you to download.
Never give money to any stranger who rings your doorbell.
Living in a college town, we get a lot of “I couldn’t find a real summer job, but I don’t want to move back to my parents’ house” kids. So they’re going door-to-door collecting money for an assortment of (mostly eco-friendly) non-profits.
I always tell them we never give money at the door, but I’d be glad to listen to their cause and take information. Sometimes at the end of their schpiel, I say “Yeah, I’d like to donate. Give me a brochure or a card and I’ll donate online or send in a check.”
Half the time they have no materials. Apparently, the management at The Save The Cute Owls And The Trees They Live In Initiative just wants their minions to rake in as much money as possible in person.
We have NoMoRobo and those “card services” robocalls trying to lower our interest rate have figured out how to get through. It’s only a matter of time before “Windows” does as well.
I am SO thankful that my mother does not have a computer or a credit card. At least I don’t have to worry about those scams. I pretty much have her trained to hang up the phone on anyone she doesn’t know. She did tell me about one call where she kept trying to talk to a robot (she didn’t know that and was confused that “he” didn’t understand her responses). And not long ago told me about a strange call from a credit card company. I said “was it from Rachel?” and she said “yes, do you know her?”.
She fell for a scam a few years ago when “AT&T” called her and said she hadn’t paid her bill and they were turning off her phone unless she could pay with a credit card right then. She told them she had already sent a check and didn’t have a credit card. So they said they had the check right there but she didn’t sign it so they would have to verify the account numbers. She gave them all of her account information and her social security number. She told me about it a few days later because she thought it was strange that they would want to know her mother’s maiden name. I nearly knocked over the chair jumping up from the dinner table and rushed home to check her account. It looked ok but I had her at the bank at 9 a.m. the next morning to get a new account. I think that scared her straight on that kind of thing. I put a freeze on her accounts with the credit bureaus and nothing ever came of it so we were lucky.
The first few may get through before NoMoRobo crowd sources the info that the number if a phony. I’ve found that if we let anything suspicious go through to the answering machine, 99.9% will hang up immediately.
I haven’t gotten one of those for ages.
A door to door scam which my neighbor with borderline dimentia fell for was the guy selling meat from a truck that they couldn’t unload. As if you’d eat it.
In general the “we’re in the neighborhood with extra material so we can repave your driveway” spiels are scams.
I just tell anyone going door to door we never buy that way, and I’d never buy without researching the product anyway.
Twenty-five years ago or so, my wife’s grandfather called me one afternoon. He’d gotten a call from a very persuasive young man, who insisted that he was with the bank, and that there was an issue with Grandpa’s bank account. He told Grandpa that they could get it all straightened out easily, but to do so, he’d need to have Grandpa meet him at the bank, where they’d make a withdrawal from his account just to make certain that everything had been reset properly.
Grandpa was going to go along with this, but something finally tripped his BS meter, and he called me to ask me what I thought. I, of course, said, “this is almost undoubtedly a scam artist, don’t meet him at the bank!” The guy called Grandpa back an hour later, asking where he was, and Grandpa hung up on him; he never called back, undoubtedly moving on to the next target.
Scam artists have preyed on the elderly for a long time, knowing that they’re less likely to think critically about these things; the only difference is that, today, the scammers can be on the other side of the planet, and still separate you from your money.
My district warns us constantly about phishing attacks but they send out surveys through a third party survey website but our district doesn’t tell us about it so all we know is that www.dodgysurveyco.com sends us an email and wants us to go to their site and enter our district login information including password.
If the first words I hear when I answer the phone are “Don’t hang up,” I immediately hang up.
I think my parents are ok, but I worry a little about my FIL. He is the biggest tightwad I have ever known, so he won’t give anyone money, but I could see it possible that someday he might fall for a scam when he’s fighting with a company about getting his money back.
I work in phone relay for the elderly deaf. It’s horrible how often they fall for this crap. Make sure your parents or loved ones’ banks know to question any large withdrawal, and preach to them (not the bank) about phone scams. I hear the scammers from my end, they’re really good at what they do. The hurt grandson crap is back.
No, nothing funny or drawn out like that. A very short curt sounding closer to someone in the mafia or something.
It works. Now sometimes I have actually gotten legit calls like once from the insurance company even though we quit giving out that old number years ago.
Maybe I’m lucky, but my parents are getting more suspicious as they get older. The first time my dad got a call from “Windows”, he just told them “I don’t have a computer”.
When my Grandpa (who I am so, so glad never go a computer, seeing as he had been the go-to financial advice person for many of his friends and lived in Nigeria for some years) got scammed, the family got his account set up so my Aunt, who lived locally, had to countersign to take out any money over something like £100. He didn’t trust credit cards and never had one, and always took money out at the local branch, which made it easier.
Grandpa thought it was a silly waste of time but went along anyway cos my aunt wouldn’t stop worrying… Obviously that nice team of roofers who even gave him a lift to the bank did a great job! They were so good, that according to the neighbours they fixed his roof even without going up the ladder!
Almost 70 here and seeing lots of spam calls to my landline, which I keep in part for screening calls.* There’s the four rings and hang-ups. There’s the ones that ring until my answering machine message starts, then hang up. There’s occasionally one that leaves a robo-message, usually from “the credit card company” or warning me my Microsoft account is imperiled. They’re from “unknown caller” or “not in service” or some city/town name, which the area code shown may or may not match. There’s some with some person’s name shown. I even got one or two supposedly from my local town, which I did pick up on because the town does do reverse-911 alerts. Just recently I got one supposedly from myself! I only answer the phone when I recognize the caller, or in mid-message if the person is legit and leaving me a message that makes that clear.
I’m sick of it. A lot of the time now I don’t even wait the four rings; if it’s clearly a spammer I hit answer and then hang up on my phone right away.
My cell phone is specifically for being able to call out when away from home, e.g., at the barn where my horse boards, and to tote a Kindle library around; otherwise it’s turned off and nobody gets that number. It gets turned on maybe once a week for a specific purpose, then shut off again. And I still get the occasional spam voicemail or text message on it.
