In a still more general sense, some people [me] are just naturally paranoid and make the default assumption that any purported business they did not initiate is (by default) a scam. It used to be my policy to never transact business (pay money or disclose personal information) on any incoming call. It is now my policy (mainly due to an excess of telemarketing calls) to not answer the phone at all unless it’s from a known and trusted number.
I think it’s dangerous to believe that anyone is 100% immune to being scammed. Some very high-profile and intelligent people fell prey to Bernie Madoff. (And yes, ultimately greed and hubris is what made them vulnerable: “I’m important enough and well-connected enough that I can get a return on investment impossible for the ordinary Joe”.) The point I was making earlier is that most scams are laughably inept and that a bit of thought and common sense would avoid the vast majority of them. Some healthy paranoia takes you most of the way to avoiding the rest of them. You don’t have to be a security expert to be paranoid.
At least four or five times a week I get a friend request from a profile with a porn-style profile pic. Invariable the person’s info is something like “Hi, I’ve started a WhatsApp group for people who want sex…” or something similar. I block and report all of them. Only once have I gotten a response from Facebook, telling me that the profile didn’t violate their terms of service.
Been getting a handful of phone calls lately from a super long phone number that somehow has a “V” in it near the beginning. They claim to be from Canada Border Services and my “social” has been used in the commission of a crime and so my “social” has been cancelled, and I need to turn myself in. I hang up at that point, before they can tell me how sending them Amazon gift cards can get me out of the jam, or whatever their particular scam is.
This is a good policy - I try to do something similar myself (although the nature of my work is such that I have to deal with stuff I didn’t initiate at times).
Just the other day though, I clicked on a link that, under normal circumstances, I would have laughed at. It caught me when I was physically tired, and it happened to coincide with a number of real-world factors that (to my tired brain) rang true. Nothing bad happened, and I wouldn’t have fallen victim to the phishing scam that the link went to (or would have gone to, if my browser hadn’t stopped it anyway)
My understanding is that “V” followed by a long string of digits in the caller name part of the caller ID (not the phone number part) is generated by some autodialer systems. I never answer such calls so I have no idea what they want, but though they’re not necessarily scam calls, they’re pretty much guaranteed to be telemarketing or some other nuisance. As always, the indicated phone number itself may or may not be spoofed.
We tend to make it easy for scammers, these days. Sign up for Facebook, Instagram, etc. and post all your family info. Here’s Grandad with his new PC we bought him, here’s Mom showing off her new iPhone, here we are visiting Tom Doe, our close friend in Los Angeles, here’s our vacation itinerary, here’s a picture of our daughter holding her new driver’s license… on and on. How can the scammers ignore such a huge trove of personal information? If I know that your grandson’s name is Todd, and he was born on January 30th, I’ll try Todd0131 - seems logical. Combine all this free information with the ability to take almost anyone’s email address and find out if it’s been part of a hack, then look up the ID AND password in an online database and you’re golden.
I worked with a senior who received a popup in her browser telling her her computer had a virus and to call ‘tech support’. Her computer, being a Chromebook, is virtually immune to virus’. Once I told her that, she understood that it was a scam. Unfortunately, being quite old, she forgot, and fell for the scam a year later.
Another person was convinced by an email (spoofed, of course) her ‘CEO’ to go and purchase $500 worth of Apple gift cards and give him the numbers over the phone so that he could ‘give them to a potential customer’.
If ‘Apple Tech Support’ calls and tell you that your computer has a virus and they want to ‘fix it for you, to prevent you infecting others on the internet’, hang up. Especially if your PC is running Windows!
Happens all the time.
If you have elderly friends or relatives considering a new computer, I strongly recommend a Chromebook or Chromebox (desktop version). They are locked down in a way that prevents virus’, users or scammers from modifying the operating system. Unfortunately that won’t stop the phone scams, but it’s one less thing to worry about.
I got a call yesterday, on my work phone, from an 888 #. I answered it. I think it may have been a “legitimate” telemarketer rather than a scam, but either way I wasn’t giving out enough to let me find out for sure.
It was a real, live person, speaking native, non-accented English, which means there was no excuse for her being dumber than a box of rocks. She was in a call center as I could hear a lot of background noise. It was for car insurance. When asked for my zip code, I informed her that I lived in Schenectady, NY (zip code = 12345 - first clue, moron). Next she asked me to spell ‘your first name’ I replied with F-I-R-S-T N-A-M-E. She asked me again. I spelled it the same way, but she still didn’t catch on that I was helping you, my fellow Dopers out by keeping her busy so she couldn’t be on any more calls. She kinda knew something was up as she said, “Your first name, can you spell ‘it’”. I replied with “I-T”
Her: “Your name is Eye-tee?”
Me: “yes”
Can y’all guess what my last name is???
Actually, you’re wrong, it got shortened at Ellis Island; it’s only ‘Last’
She then informed me that she was (the screener & she was) going to connect me to an insurance agent. I got bored of being on hold & didn’t think I’d get two total morons in a row so I hung up.
Oddly enough, though, my friend was legit trying to buy thousands of dollars in gift cards this past weekend. Usually on Black Friday stores have 10% off gift card sales. She’s going to Disney World in a couple months and you can buy Disney gift cards to use for almost everything on a Disney trip. So, if you fund an entire trip, like $6000, in gift cards, at 10% off that’s a significant savings. Gift cards are only $500 max and at the stores she was looking at there was a max of 2 cards per order AND a limited number of cards for sale. I think it was Meijer, Sam’s Club and Costco.
Anyway she logged on at midnight and started trying to make her purchases and of course her credit and debit cards were declined. Because buying thousands of dollars worth of gift cards at midnight is, on any other day, hella scammy seeming.
She got pissed and was calling the card providers complaining that she missed out on the deals because the cards were declined. It is true that she did miss some of the timed deals. She was mad that the providers didn’t think to work “midnight on Black Friday is ok for this sort of activity” into their fraud alert algorithms. But I flat out told her everything else about these transactions - apart from being stores she already shops at - will send up huge red flags for fraud.
Anyway, I think there’s got to be some push-and-pull between fraud algorithms, consumers who don’t want to hassle with their cards being denied for legit purchases, and brands that are perfectly ok with these gift card purchases since most of the time the gift cards get used and the company loses no money.
Freedoms, and stuff. I dunno. I totally agree that gift card purchases should be limited.
Although many times the scammers will tell the victims to go to several stores to buy cards so as not to raise suspicion. And they will.
Here’s the kicker - I think I shred this upthread, I have a friend who’s mom fell victim to a gift card scam earlier this year. That is the same friend who was just complaining about her credit card being denied for purchasing so many gift cards.
Anytime my gf makes a major purchase at Lowes, she first buys gift cards at our grocery store. Lowes gives some kind of discount. So, we occasionally buy ten $100 Lowes gift cards, then use them all later that day.
Apparently I won $67,000 because I shopped at Best Buy sometime in the past 3 years.
Fed Ex will be delivering to me a cashiers check for the money, but I have to pay the delivery fee of $500 via a CVS gift card.
Why can’t I wait to cash the check and take $500 out of that to pay the fee?
NO! By law we cannot accept cash. Now give me your name and address so we can schedule delivery of your prize. We will call you back so you can give me the numbers from the gift card!
For a guy that sounded exactly like Apu from the Simpsons this guy got pretty pissy.
I won 67K but they don’t know my name?
I’m sorry, but anyone who were to fall for this horseshit deserves to lose $500.
They ought to do a remake of the movie “The Sting”. Only the scams are so bad and ridiculously obvious the con men lose money everytime. It gets to the point where people look forward to these schmucks calling them up so they can fuck with them. Robert Redford is still alive, isn’t he?
Not everybody has all their wits about them, through no fault of their own. Elderly people in early stages of dementia, etc. They don’t “deserve” to lose $500. You must know this.
Our local Lowe’s has signs up at the customer service desk warning about gift card scams, noting that that various government entities do not demand payment in or accept gift cards.
Sure , not everyone deserves to lose the money - but not everyone who falls for these scams has dementia or some other problem. I have known people who have fallen for scams , who had no issues with dementia or competency of any sort - their only problem was that their desire to get the $67K or to split the money in the “pigeon” or “handkerchief drop” overwhelmed the common sense that should have told them that the recipient of a real prize will never have to pay a $500 fee for a $67K check to be delivered ( they could just send a $66.5K check if the fee was really that much) or have to put up a certain amount of money in order to split a sum of money found by other people ( and after all, why would these people randomly be offering to share money with me if they found it )
Did you actually talk to the people they were talking to? These scammers can be VERY convincing. Our store personnel deal with them all the time, and they seem to have a mental hold on people that is pretty amazing.
