One of the folks I follow on Twitter goes by the handle of The Hoarse Whisperer. He is one of a number of progressive voices in my echo chamber. I don’t always agree with 100% with what he says, but he’s always thoughtful and often funny. (While I tend for the most part to follow liberals/progressives, I also followsome conservatives – George Conway, Max Boot, Rick Wilson, Nicolle Wallace et al. But they’re Never Trumpers, so you might say they’re in my echo chamber as well. I do not follow anyone who supports Trump, but I do see plenty of what they have to say via retweets.)
Anyway, Hoarse Whisperer isn’t always political. He tweets about his family, about sports, about what he’s eating, and how he’s feeling. And the other day he had a very funny tweet about some Nigerian scam artists that had come after him, informing him that his long lost uncle, Michael Whisperer, had left him a great deal of money. We all know the rest: in order for Uncle Michael Whisperer’s beloved nephew to get his hooves on his inheritance, he would have to put up a bit of earnest money.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve gotten an email from the Nigerians. But I do get regular phone scam calls, on both my landline (yep, I’m old school enough to still have one!) and my cell phone.
Interesting, the cell phone callers, who mostly use spoof numbers that look a lot like my mobile number, very rarely leave a message.
Not so the landline lubbers.
I pretty much get one a day, and, of the recent spate of robocalls, most of them were from different numbers using the same voice: a woman with a very faint and vague accent. And all of them start in mid-flow. They start far enough in to the message that you’re left wondering what you’ve missed. (But not wondering all that much.)
One of them told me I owed some non-specified company money for “this services by auto debit registration. It is just to let you know that today the money is going to automatically be debited from your bank account.” And, of course, they left a call back number. Their hotline. Because, after all, it is such an urgent matter.
Sure, I’ll get on that right away. The last thing I want is you debiting my bank account for that auto debit registration, whoever you are, whatever you claim I signed up for.
Another one left a garbled message about my computer and some remediation Microsoft wanted them to take care of.
I haven’t got any recently, but I’ve gotten plenty that inform me that there’s something funky going on with one of my – always unspecified – credit cards. Or that I’m about to get arrested for something or other. Or that I’m in big trouble with the IRS.
The IRS? Hmmm.
Well, I did just hear from the Commonwealth that I transposed a couple of numbers from one line to the next, so I owe another $36 bucks.
And one of my clients sent me a 1099 overstating my earnings by a couple of orders of magnitude. So there’s that. (The company did send me a corrected version and assured me that this was the one that was filed.)
There are some folks who deliberately call the hotlines back just to harass the caller.
I’ve done this a couple of times. Sometimes it’s just plain fun to harass the harasser and see how long you can string them along before they figure out they’re not going to get anything out of you. Or until I end up screaming at them for being such rotten people.
My favorite call of late informed me that my Social Security number was being used, and that my Social Security was compromised. All they needed for me to do to clear up this matter was the call them and give them the last-4 digits of my SS#.
Sure….
On one hand, all of these scams are laughable. Come one, who falls for this hooey?
But it’s not just stupid people that get sucked in by these scams.
Admittedly, in order to fall for one of those Nigerian-send-us-$20K-scams, you have to be greedy and and not the sharpest tool in the shed.
But for the more run-of-the-mill scams?
If you’re distracted, if they get you on a bad day, if you happen to pick up the pone when you usually don’t, if you’re worried about whether your credit card number was stolen, if you just heard about a major hacking incident in the news…
Hey, I can see someone giving up their credit card number or last 4 digits.
But the best rule of thumb is: JUST DON’T.
Call the number on the back of your credit card. Call the real IRS. Google that “hotline” number to see if they’re legit. (Clue: 99% of the time they’re not.) Etc. Meanwhile, I’ll be making sure that I’m never distracted enough to give my info to one of these bastards. I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing. Unless I recognize the number, I won’t answer the phone. Don’t call me, I’ll call you…
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