I got a phone call (purportedly from Amazon, warning me that my account got charged a lot of money, etc.) and I answered “Yes,” to one of “their” questions, at which point they hung up. Oh, shit, I realized as I remembered there was a scam that tried you to say the word “Yes” over the phone so they could use it to–do what? And what is it that I can do to stop them from doing whatever it is that they do?
The ‘scam’ is that they could ship you, say, 3 pallets of copy machine toner and a bill for $40,000. You, of course, deny that you ordered it and they play back a recording where someone called you, asked if you wanted to order the toner and then your voice dubbed in saying ‘yes’.
The reality is that it’s literally never happened, or at least there’s been no reports of it happening. Lots of people reporting what happened to you, but nothing ever became of it.
This started a while back when you’d pick up the phone, the operator would say ‘hold on, let me adjust my headset…can you hear me?’, you’d say yes and they’d hang up.
I assume it was more just to check that there’s a live person on the phone, or better yet, a live person that proved they’ll at least start a conversation instead of hanging up during that few seconds between saying hello and getting a response.
TLDR, you have literally nothing to worry about, nothing is going to become of it. Just carry on and don’t give it a second thought.
It’s really no different from someone getting a sample of your signature. Sure, they can make a compelling looking ‘contract’ for, say, five years of earthworm inspections @$100k but what then?
“Pay us.”
“Naw.”
" … "
Glad to learn this–thanks. But why the hell is this being done at all? What are they looking to gain by pestering people with panic phone calls, and then hanging up after getting a “yes” response to a question?
Sometimes it’s just to “see if the number is valid” for sale to other scammers, but a lot of times the workings of these scam calls make absolutely no sense in all likelihood don’t make any money for anybody. This stuff is illegal for all sorts of reasons, usually organized by foreign small-time criminals whose understanding of American legal norms and economics may be imperfect, and doesn’t operate according to normal business rules. One of the biggest things is, they know you have no incentive to wait on the line for them because they called you and they want to be able to rush the marks into handing over credit card info rather than give them time to think about it. If they can only find 20 other criminals to work in their illegal call center and they get 28 live hooks at once then 8 of them will just be randomly chosen to be dropped. They aren’t going to invest in a queuing and hold system like a real business.
They might have thought you were messing with them(scambaiting) or that you actually had ordered the item.
Did they ever say what the charge was for?
No. They (she) said that a charge for $1099 showed up on my Amazon account, and was being withheld pending an investigation. She asked me if I had ever given private information to anyone, and I said “Yes, a few months ago, I fell for a phishing scam” and the phone went dead. When i looked on my Amazon account, there was nothing I hadn’t ordered, and my credit card info also looked fine.
seconding that the fearful “YES” panic is purely B.S.
THere is no way that anyone can make anything stick because of a purported ‘yes’ on a recording that could be anyone. It makes no sense, scammers would be better served just saying ‘yes’ themselves into a recording and claiming it was you. I can’t even recognize my own voice with one word from a recording transmitted by phone and the played back by phone.
The bigger scam is the internet meme perpetuating this falsehood.
Just imagine the fun if the scammers tried to enforce the so-called “yes” in court or with the police. And that’s assuming they are in the US. Scammers work on fear, not contracts, real or fake.
I suspect that the phone went dead because the caller figured you’d be on guard against another phishing scam; and might even have been saying that you recognized that this was one.
I found that I can keep scammers on the phone longer if I “sound old”. If I sound like my young, cheery, robust self, they hang up pretty quickly. So, maybe you just didn’t sound like a mark.
Agreed, it’s highly likely that mentioning phishing resulted in the hangup, not saying “yes”.
I do the same. I also tell them I am hard of hearing and I need them to speak up. Had one guy hollering at me for 5 minutes.
I did get a call from a credit card processor who asked if they could send someone out to talk to me. I was a bit curious as to whether I was getting a competitive rate, so I let them.
When the guy showed up, he had a credit card machine, and was insisting that I had agreed to change services and let him install it.
I told him that I had not, and he claimed he had a recording of me agreeing to it. I told him to get the fuck out of my shop, and never heard from him again.
I think it was more high pressure sales tactics than a straight up scam, but since then, I’ve been very sure to never say anything positive to people who call me and try to sell me their services.
Some of the guys that shoot videos of scamming scammers use voice effect software to make themselves sound like dear ol’ granny. Here’s one of Kitboga with a tasteful wig:
