Fake call

sucks2beme

Just got a call from someone claiming to be border security about a
suspicious package addressed to me from Mexico. Yeah, not with
an Indian accent. She wasn't even remotely credible. Pretty brazen.
Kileen TX caller ID. If the wife wasn't standing right there I would of
Said something really bad instead of hanging up. At least they weren't
trying to buy my house.

pitdogg2

I had two of those (fake calls) last week. I called the number back as it said it was my same area code. Then something surprising happened, the owner of the number answered. I asked them if they knew about their number being used for these calls, they were shocked as well. It was real easy to tell that they hadn't made the calls as both were as american as I, the callers were Indian or ****. I also mentioned I had reported their numbers as spam callers. They were appreciative that I called.

sucks2beme

The industry was forced to make changes to prevent calls from customers
unless they presented a valid caller ID from their account, or block it. These
guys are.using a backdoor via the international network. Why didn't the
president tell India's leader to fix this during their big meeting the other month?
At least the extended warranty calls have stopped.

pitdogg2

At least the extended warranty calls have stopped.

Well not mine.... I get 8-9 I block a month. sigh!

pitdogg2

WOW P a k i is censored ? crazy.....

F1nut

pitdogg2 wrote: »

WOW P a k i is censored ? crazy.....

Now, we know you wrote the censor program.

pitdogg2

Milito

When I use to get those Microsoft calls from India saying something was wrong with my computer and they wanted to do a remote log in I started keeping a whistle by my desk. I would ask them it they could wait a minute as I needed to get something. I would get back on and ask them if they were still there? If they said yes I would blow the whistle as hard as I could and then hang up. I did that 3 or 4 times and the calls stopped.

I didn't care if it damaged their ears as they were trying to put spyware on my computer and then demand money for me to be able to use my computer again.

Viking64

My mother gets several calls from India every day. My brother is visiting her (in Vermont) and Friday they received over 50 calls! The caller ID always reads as if the call is coming from some small town in Vermont.

When I am there, I often see calls from Randolph, Vermont and I always assume it is Mark Hardy calling from a concert at The Chandler Music Hall.

F1nut

F1nut wrote: »

pitdogg2 wrote: »

WOW P a k i is censored ? crazy.....

Now, we know you wrote the censor program.

Auto correct must have struck and I didn't notice. That was supposed to read, Now, we know WHO wrote the censor program.

ChrisD06

Amateurs... hanging up and reporting is BOOORING.

Here's proper advice before I show you what I do: When you get a scam call, always let it ring out. Don't decline, don't answer, just let it ring out. As you let them ring out they assume the number is no longer in service or its a dead line and they just remove you from the mailing list.

Here's my method: Border security scams? "OH great, that's the 'insert illicit substance' I ordered!"
Tech support? "Yeah my computer hasn't been working right ever since I installed water cooling. Who knew putting electronics in water would become the new norm?'
Refund scam? "Oh yeah I did order that, thanks for the confirmation call"

Then my favorite, text scams! Here's a screenshot from yesterday:



Obviously you guys are much older than me so your... sense of humor is probably not going to find this as funny as me or my friends did, but my point is that if you're feeling like having some fun, they're great to mess around with.

ChrisD06

pitdogg2 wrote: »

I had two of those (fake calls) last week. I called the number back as it said it was my same area code. Then something surprising happened, the owner of the number answered. I asked them if they knew about their number being used for these calls, they were shocked as well. It was real easy to tell that they hadn't made the calls as both were as american as I, the callers were Indian or ****. I also mentioned I had reported their numbers as spam callers. They were appreciative that I called.

My dad got a call from a number and he let it ring out. He decided to call it back to inform the owner and when he told the owner of the number he got a call from his number and scammers were using it, the owner of the number said something along the lines of "I just got a call from [biyour[/b] number!"

pitdogg2

@ChrisD06
Obviously you guys are much older than I am...

Yep most of us are way past 12, maybe you can try calling someone and ask if their refrigerator is running.......

mrbigbluelight

Ring out is the way to go, along with a good program like *Should I Answer", etc.

I once answered the phone to deal with "Bob" from "over there"
After a . minute or so I asked him what he was wearing.
I kept repeating that question.
After that I asked him if he wanted to know what I was wearing.
He wasn't interested so I made some suggestions regarding his family"s dating
habits
."Bob" got mad as a wet hen and called back a dozen times just to chew me out
I blocked every number he was using zo all in all we had fun. ☎️💥🎉

ChrisD06

pitdogg2 wrote: »

@ChrisD06
Obviously you guys are much older than I am...

Yep most of us are way past 12, maybe you can try calling someone and ask if their refrigerator is running.......

Pretty much. It's definitely the most immature response possible but do keep in mind these guys are trying to rob vulnerable people and waste your time, so it's justified.

bcwsrt

ChrisD06 wrote: »

Obviously you guys are much older than me so your... sense of humor is probably not going to find this as funny as me or my friends did, but my point is that if you're feeling like having some fun, they're great to mess around with.

pitdogg2 wrote: »

@ChrisD06
Obviously you guys are much older than I am...

Yep most of us are way past 12, maybe you can try calling someone and ask if their refrigerator is running.......

Guess I'm proudly in the "way past 12" group, as, not having heard it since I was 12, ROTFLMAO'd at the latter statement, but quickly grew bored by the former text string. 😎

msg

ChrisD06 wrote: »

Amateurs... hanging up and reporting is BOOORING.

Here's proper advice before I show you what I do: When you get a scam call, always let it ring out. Don't decline, don't answer, just let it ring out. As you let them ring out they assume the number is no longer in service or its a dead line and they just remove you from the mailing list.

Here's my method: Border security scams? "OH great, that's the 'insert illicit substance' I ordered!"
Tech support? "Yeah my computer hasn't been working right ever since I installed water cooling. Who knew putting electronics in water would become the new norm?'
Refund scam? "Oh yeah I did order that, thanks for the confirmation call"

Then my favorite, text scams! Here's a screenshot from yesterday:

Obviously you guys are much older than me so your... sense of humor is probably not going to find this as funny as me or my friends did, but my point is that if you're feeling like having some fun, they're great to mess around with.

I received something very similar today, only the woman was Chinese and has a business in Manhattan. It started with "inviting her friend to dinner, she's making chicken curry".

bcwsrt

What websites are you guys visiting besides this one?! 😮😂

msg

don't worry B, you don't have to feel left out. I've started using your phone number for stuff. you should be able to join in the fun here pretty soon, too!

bcwsrt wrote: »

What websites are you guys visiting besides this one?! 😮😂

ChrisD06

msg wrote: »

ChrisD06 wrote: »

Amateurs... hanging up and reporting is BOOORING.

Here's proper advice before I show you what I do: When you get a scam call, always let it ring out. Don't decline, don't answer, just let it ring out. As you let them ring out they assume the number is no longer in service or its a dead line and they just remove you from the mailing list.

Here's my method: Border security scams? "OH great, that's the 'insert illicit substance' I ordered!"
Tech support? "Yeah my computer hasn't been working right ever since I installed water cooling. Who knew putting electronics in water would become the new norm?'
Refund scam? "Oh yeah I did order that, thanks for the confirmation call"

Then my favorite, text scams! Here's a screenshot from yesterday:

Obviously you guys are much older than me so your... sense of humor is probably not going to find this as funny as me or my friends did, but my point is that if you're feeling like having some fun, they're great to mess around with.

I received something very similar today, only the woman was Chinese and has a business in Manhattan. It started with "inviting her friend to dinner, she's making chicken curry".

Want to know what's funnier? In my screenshot the lady is looking for her friend Anna.

Turns out, 4 months or so ago, I was speaking to Anna!



Incase you're curious about what happens if you agree to be friends, they send you a link to their new 'business' which grabs your information and then they will try to force money out of you, either by making you buy a 'product', blackmailing you, extorting you, etc.

msg

Mine is named Diana looking for her friend Sophie, who is supposed to be visiting Manhattan on business. Diana was seeing if Sophie wanted to come for dinner, and that she was making chicken curry.

I managed to get an invite to dinner as well. I think I might leave that dinner minus a kidney.

I do also have an open invite to Manhattan, where she'll be my guide.

same deal though - sweet, complimentary, starts asking personal questions. so far, I'll be 33 later this year, and asked if she has any family. I'm lonely because all mine are back home in Vancouver and don't talk to me anymore

I also work in waste management for the city. she hopes that I am happy, and I like it okay, and that it gives me good work life balance.

msg

ChrisD06 wrote: »

Incase you're curious about what happens if you agree to be friends, they send you a link to their new 'business' which grabs your information and then they will try to force money out of you, either by making you buy a 'product', blackmailing you, extorting you, etc.

wow! how do you now this? link data mines for your mobile?

ChrisD06

msg wrote: »

Mine is named Diana looking for her friend Sophie, who is supposed to be visiting Manhattan on business. Diana was seeing if Sophie wanted to come for dinner, and that she was making chicken curry.

I managed to get an invite to dinner as well. I think I might leave that dinner minus a kidney.

I do also have an open invite to Manhattan, where she'll be my guide.

same deal though - sweet, complimentary, starts asking personal questions. so far, I'll be 33 later this year, and asked if she has any family. I'm lonely because all mine are back home in Vancouver and don't talk to me anymore

I also work in waste management for the city. she hopes that I am happy, and I like it okay, and that it gives me good work life balance.

Weird. I do wonder how many of these 'wrong number' scenarios are scams. I feel 98% are scams, 1% are criminals (trafficking, organ harvesting), and 1% are actual 'oops' wrong numbers. I stopped responding formally and started just saying outrageous things, usually weeds out the 99% from the 1%. I've had a couple actually type the wrong number and I do make sure to clarify that I'm not insane and that it's just my way of bothering the scammers.

One day it'll ACTUALLY be an CRA agent or something and I'll get arrested lol. Oh well.

msg

pretty sure they all are. as an exercise, I'm seeing how far it goes.

one shift has occurred - she's now casually mentioned that this is her work number she rarely uses, and says that her friend and family use whatsapp and asked if I have it, then we could be private.

I suspect this is due to the encryption whatsapp uses, and could make it difficult to trace someone once something bad happens.

I was just reading that these things sometimes devolve into blackmail, romance scams, etc.

msg

"she" is really pushing now for me to start using Whatsapp to correspond further, and I've been provided a different phone number to use with a 917 area code, which seems to also be in NY. casually poking around reading up on this process. never heard much about before. the social engineering stuff's getting more clever. all it takes is one mistake.

@Jstas - what do you know/think about this stuff?

@sucks2beme - great topic!

to anyone following along - pretty sure you're all smart enough here to know better, but never click any links in unsolicited txt messages, and be wary of those sent even from people you know. I haven't seen any of this personally, but supposedly, mobile can be compromised and texts sent to your contacts, expanding the campaign. the verbiage, grammar and spelling is getting better with AI now, so watch out.

if it's anything from a financial institution - skip the link, and browse directly to the site manually in a browser. personally, I don't do any banking on mobile devices.

Unrelated note - to help avoid Amazon scams and credit car skimming, you can buy yourself gift credit, and use that for your purchases. I had my card lifted twice before I realized it was happening with Amz purchases. this was years ago. could be better controlled now.

msg

after casually declining to use whatsapp, correspondence has ended. person on the other end deftly avoided alternatives I proposed. I even tried getting an address to write a letter, saying I'm old fashioned and have friends all over the world, and that they enjoy the feel of paper, and the calligraphy I write in. oh, and I also seal those letters with wax using my signet ring lol

mrbigbluelight

"Do you have Prince Albert in a can ?"
(Doesn't work if you call CVS)

Local Supermarket:
"Do you have crab legs ?"

ChrisD06

msg wrote: »

"she" is really pushing now for me to start using Whatsapp to correspond further, and I've been provided a different phone number to use with a 917 area code, which seems to also be in NY. casually poking around reading up on this process. never heard much about before. the social engineering stuff's getting more clever. all it takes is one mistake.

@Jstas - what do you know/think about this stuff?

@sucks2beme - great topic!

to anyone following along - pretty sure you're all smart enough here to know better, but never click any links in unsolicited txt messages, and be wary of those sent even from people you know. I haven't seen any of this personally, but supposedly, mobile can be compromised and texts sent to your contacts, expanding the campaign. the verbiage, grammar and spelling is getting better with AI now, so watch out.

if it's anything from a financial institution - skip the link, and browse directly to the site manually in a browser. personally, I don't do any banking on mobile devices.

Unrelated note - to help avoid Amazon scams and credit car skimming, you can buy yourself gift credit, and use that for your purchases. I had my card lifted twice before I realized it was happening with Amz purchases. this was years ago. could be better controlled now.

I'm pretty familiar with scams. Never click any links, and never move to another form of communication. Don't let them get access to your computer, don't give them any information. It's best to let calls ring out and to immediately block and delete texts.

haveibeenpwned.com also tells you if your information was leaked in a data breach, whether it be you were hacked or scammers knowing more info than just your phone number.

Use password managers, use VPNs on public networks, install AdBlock, FastForward, and enable all security and privacy options on your browser (Edge or FireFox preferred). Enable spam call screening and text spam blocking on your phone.

Secure all of your accounts with 2-factor authentication ALWAYS and use the randomly generated encrypted passwords. Never use the same password across accounts, always a new one. Password managers make it so you don't need to memorize the passwords.

As for these wrong number scams, they're arguably the most clever. Lots of social engineering going into them. I've noticed some tech support scammers have also been getting better too. For instance, one scam call center I called switched from the normal "Thank you, your call is important to us" to a DIRECT 1:1 copy of Microsoft's hold track. They also use professional expensive software which is shocking.

Be careful. You don't want some complete P.O.S getting your money

Jstas

It's not as nefarious as you are making it out to be with the girls.

They will hook you and pull on the string if they can get you to, like, WhatsApp, yeah they can glean more info off your account but it's really because it's easier for them to send pictures and files and stuff.

They send you "private" pictures of some girl, usually an adult entertainment star or model's instagram that they poached. Then they give you a sob story and ask you to go buy gift cards at a local store and transfer the gift cards to them so they can get the "help" they need. In return they send you pictures they took "just for you".

Unless you have some kind of financial info tied to WhatsApp, they aren't going to get anything you don't give them. The worst they can do is hijack your Facebook account.

With the computer support scam, that gets sketchy but the reality is that the software they have you put on is typically just an app that makes it hard for you to use your system. It's buried deep and the only ways to turn it off are to do some really fancy IT work or to pay for their "spyware removal" and get the code that turns the software off. The payment they are asking is usually way cheaper than paying an IT person. The thing is, that software never really goes away and they can actually turn it back on at any time and make you pay more to get it turned off. While having the software on your system is mostly used for easy targets to get them to willfully give you money for a "service" that "works every time", the problem is, it's a back door and there are people with more nefarious ideas that can exploit that back door. The scammers can too but that makes it a harder target. Either way, don't fall for it. The biggest clue they have is that they will say something like your computer is sending out problematic messages and they found them. Sometimes they will try to threaten you with legal action but most times they are trying to be benevolent and help you. Either way, there's no way that they would be able to do/see what they are saying unless they knew exactly what the bad software was doing and where because they are involved with it. Otherwise, it's all BS.

What you should do if you happen to get stuck on a call with a fool like that is go to SourceForge and grab the latest version of HiJackThis.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/

While you are on the phone with the idiot, download and run HiJackThis. It doesn't require an install, it's just an inspector that finds all the questionable stuff typically used to hijack a computer. It will call out known bad stuff. So if you do that and the fool on the phone is still jabbering at you, you can tell them to go pound sand if you come up with nothing. If you do come up with something, HiJackThis can usually fix it. If you can't run HiJackThis, you have an issue that will likely need some help with antivirus work.


The seemingly random stuff from local numbers is pretty much that. An autodialer. However, the scammers get around the rules by paying for your info from various sites that collect your data and sell it. So instead of having an autodialer that randomly dials every number of an area code and exchange, they input a list of numbers and dial them from each other, spoofing them. Since you gave up that info and didn't read the fine print, they can't be shut down by the do not call list. That's pretty ineffective anyway.

In general:
- Don't interact with numbers calling or texting you that you don't know.
- Don't click on links or install software from flash ads, especially if you did not pay for it
- Use your caller ID. All cellphones have it and it's standard on all landlines now

Personally, I don't respond to random spam texts, not even an insult response. I don't respond to random messages or tagging on social media. It goes to spam folders and gets deleted. Hell, with the voicemail to text feature on Android phones now, I don't even answer the phone if your number is not in my contacts. If it is, your name shows up. If not, you go to voicemail and I will get back to you if you are real.

Sometimes they get you but for the most part, aside from the gift card scam which is pretty benign in the grand scheme of things, it's basically digital pan handling, most times the random call is just to establish that there is a real person there on that line and then they market it as active. Then they sell your number along with every other foolish person who answered the phone or responded to a text and you get pummeled with spam calls from everyone who paid for the contact list of active numbers.

sucks2beme

My problem is doctors all call to verify appointments. Multiple times.
If you don't respond, the appointment is canceled. And they have
different numbers they call from. Much better are email or text
appointment reminders.
Sadly, two years after retirement, I still get calls from work. Users
kept my number and call to avoid the long and painful wait to contact
the IT helpdesk.

mrbigbluelight

Sometimes they will try to threaten you with legal action

I get that all the time from some outfit called the IRS.
They can't tell me what to do
💪