The old adage - “If it’s too good to be true, then it is.”
Too many people are falling for these scams. If we could somehow educate them the scams would go away. But it seems that there are way too many idiots out there and new ones appearing every day.
Actually, the FCC required telcos do at least some filtering of the scam calls using a form of authentication. It has worked well with a dramatic reduction in scam calls although a few still trickle through.
I used to play games but them heard stories of scammers getting vindictive. Someone locally was “swatted” after screwing with a scammer. Now I just waste their time. I set the phone down or put it in my pocket and just leave it off mute so they can hear all the background noise. They sit on the line 5-10 minutes and then hang up. I think you get added to a scammer “do not call” list or something by doing this as I had one scam company calling over and over. I started wasting their time like this and the calls stopped pretty quickly.
A lot of these scam calls are from virtualized phone numbers overseas. They have to pay by the call and minute to make these scam calls. Those who are known to just waste their time are costing them money for these calls. Then you have the time value of a person being held up by an empty line.
There is even a meme dedicated to the folks who reject every bit of good advice, and who are bound and determined to be scam victims:
I couldn’t have said it any better. I frequently deal with repeat victims of scams and see them throw away thousands of dollars a month. I hand out papers with all the things NOT to do and people read it, then do the same nonsense that got them in trouble in the past.
There are WAY too many idiots who fall for these scams. I never thought I would be making this much money cleaning up these types of messes. I usually deal with several victims of this daily.
Overall the biggest vector of scams is Facebook/Meta. These guys are crooks and KNOW their platforms are being used for fraud but they profit as well so look the other way. I don’t see how this is legal but I guess when you buy elections, anything is possible.
The articles below should be required reading before opening a Facebook account.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-27/ad-scammers-need-suckers-and-facebook-helps-find-them
That is a good one! Basically many are determined to be scam victims.
I was dealing with a guy and his mother is one of these people. Her three sons were about to disown her because she wouldn’t stop throwing away her money on scams. Finally she was about to lose her home and have her power turned off. The brothers gave her money but she sent it to scammers instead! They came up with a plan to get ahold of her various accounts, one or so per month, so that she could no longer just give her money away to scammers.
She must have given away over a half a million dollars over several years. She got herself on an FBI list and was no longer allowed to open any line of credit, bank account, phone/internet service, etc. The 3 brothers were a lot happier once they got ahold of her finances but she was mad. She kept telling them how she wanted to pay someone and needed then to go buy her whatever gift cards at the store. Basically the brothers bought all her food, paid all her bills, etc. They got her social security sent to them and REFUSED to give her any actual money because the first thing she would do is give it to the scammers.
They gave her money once and the first thing she did was go buy a bunch of pre-paid phones. She started mailing them out in padded envelopes to locations all over the world. Basically this woman was a “mule” for criminals and she didn’t think she was doing anything wrong.
Similarly, there is the phenomenon of women who are convinced that a person whom they have never met, and who lives in a distant foreign country, is going to marry them.
Before they figure out that they have been scammed, they have done wire transfers of thousands of $$ to their “husband-to-be”. Even when confronted with incontrovertible evidence of the scam, some of them continue to send money to a foreign source.
I think that is what was going on with that woman.
I had two scams stopped by banks recently. One woman was trying to wire $40,000 internationally and another $50,000. Basically both had gone to the store and bought cheapo inkject printers for less than $100. They looked up the support number for the maker of their printer online and called. Of course it was a scam number.
I had to explain that you don’t have to pay $40,000 to pay to setup a $100 or less printer! One woman left the computer on for like a day before calling me at the request of her bank. The scammers had full access to her computer during this time.
They re-wrote her UEFI Firmware/BIOS and had a remote backdoor at the firmware level. No amount of reinstalling the OS would fix this. I told her I could probably clear the firmware and reload it via the recovery option but she simply didn’t trust the computer at this point and was scared after her near miss. She ended up buying a new computer from me.
Hey guys—I will put you on my prayer list for $10.00/month.
Oops, that’s television marketing.
Currently, yes, but that scam predates modern TV advertising. For several years back in the '70s, I got repeated mailings from Reverend Ike who promised to pray for me if I sent him $10 each month. There were testimonials from people like a woman from Alabama who was sitting in front of her tarpaper shack, admiring the “brand new Lincoln Continental” that was suddenly delivered after Reverend Ike’s intervention.
Before TV—radio
One of the most interesting books I’ve ever read is this one:
It’s the story of “Doctor” Brinkley, who used the power of radio advertising to lure impotent naïve men to his unlicensed “hospital” so that he could place goat glands in their body for his miracle cure. Many died, others were crippled, and nobody was cured, but his radio ad blitz over the space of at least a decade enabled him to amass incredible wealth and a fleet of Cadillacs with gold-plated trim.
The religion scams seem to hook people badly. The Facebook prayer requests are a great way to build a list of potential victims to then target. People seem to think they will go to hell or something if they don’t do this and then follow the directions given by the scammer, often resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars. Again, people will be arguing with their bank that this isn’t a scam.
A lot of the crap on Facebook is related to a practice known as “like farming” which is an online attention getting contest. The more interaction posts have, the higher they go in the feeds, resulting in more exposure. Some posts are pure like farming and then they switch gears to something else worse. Others are a combo like farming and scam operation simultaneously.
The free “giveaways” that pollute social media with promises to win a car, truck, camper/RV, iPhone, TV, vacations, restaurant meals, retail gift cards, or other valuable prizes are all scams using like farming to their advantage. People fall for these things in droves! It is like watching sheep lining up at the door to the slaughterhouse and banging to get inside because there is the promise of a free meal there. It always amazes me at how many people fall for these scams.
Unfortunately the companies have no idea this is going on. Ford has no clue that scammers are promising to give away a new F150. When people get scammed, they get mad at Ford, Toyota, or whoever is being impersonated. I like to forward these scams to the social media presence of the large company being impersonated. Small companies don’t have the resources to fight this but GM, Ford, Toyota, Coca Cola, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Lowes, etc. will do their best to have this crap shut down.
I almost did it.
Caller: The newspaper (the one I take) is offering a $5/month discount on your subscription if you change to automatic debit billing. Are you interested?
Me: Sure!
Caller: Ok, glad to help. What is your social security number & checking account routing number?
Me: What? Why do you need that?
Caller: We need that to automatically deduct the monthly payment from your checking account.
Me: hmmmmm … Before I can give you that info, I’ll need to call the newspaper to confirm
you are representing them.
Caller: Click …
I phoned newspaper, they said there is no such discount, and that I wasn’t the only one to get this fake offer. They said law enforcement had been notified & determined these folks found which newspaper people were taking by walking around the neighborhoods looking in the driveways.
This happened quite a few years ago. I think a great service would be a website you could surf to to see which scams are going on currently in your own area. One problem w/this idea, criminals might use this website for scam ideas.
The Tom Mabe Telemarketer video was removed.
One can go to YouTube and type Tom Mabe telemarketer.
Please tell me more about this, as I buy nothing but used computers in order to save money. Of course, I always use a program such as Killdisk to wipe the hard drive and install my own operating system and application software. You are seriously telling me that scam artists can potentially infect the BIOS/firmware of a computer, and that subsequent owners of this computer could then be at risk? I have never heard of such a thing until now.
Scammer Payback has some interesting videos out there. One video I watched him use their own remote login to access their computer and delete the files that has names and phone numbers of people those Indian scammers call. A couple others have used the scammer’s own webcams during the calls
This is definitely a concern depending on the source and previous use of the used computers. I know some people buy used computers and have decent luck. I personally see all the crap that people paid good money for that ends up costing WAY more in the end than buying new. There are a lot of basically scams related to used computer sales these days. A local guy cobbles whatever crap together with duct take and superglue and sends it out the door for $150. He even offers a trade in on your old system for this. You give him the core and get one of these junk refurbs for $150. Often the problem with the old computer was simple and in the end he gets a much nicer computer (your old one) and then resells you low-end junk from Wal-Mart that has been patched together.
I see lots of horror stories about junk bought off Facebook Marketplace, eBay, and such. There are decent used computers out there but I feel the risk is too high and the cost savings to be pretty much nonexistent. I buy my computers in bulk so get better pricing and wait until I find a deal on a quality system before buying a bulk lot. Everything is new with a factory warranty. I once priced some used computers that were several generations old and they cost as much or more than just buying new. It isn’t uncommon to find a good basic setup for $450 or so these days.
Firmware hacks are pretty rare and I have only seen this happen like twice in all my time working on computers. One was pretty recent and now it sounds like there are kits hackers can use to install this to make it easy for them. This probably isn’t as big of a deal on used systems but just another reason why used computers aren’t worth the risk for the cost savings. I deal with a lot of commercial and governmental customers who replace systems on a 3-5 year schedule to prevent problems. I used to try to sell some used systems but it wasn’t worth my time. A lot of the people who bought these ended up being trouble as well and my sanity and safety were just not worth the risk of that either.
Killdisk WILL NOT wipe something like this either!
Keep in mind that this applies to cars as well. I seem to recall hackers stealing cars by rewriting firmware or finding a bug in firmware. I seem to recall Chrysler having a problem with this a while ago and now I hear something about Kia as well.
This article explains more.
I spoke too soon. I got like 5-6 scam calls yesterday so my number must have been sold on some list again.
One was for a car warranty while another was student loans. Then I got 3x or so about a $1400 MacBook Pro that had been ordered on my Amazon account. I talked to the people and they had no clue why they had even called me. They tried 3x more times and then seemed to give up. Talk about a bad scam if they can’t even follow through.
Why would you call the scammers?
When I get messages about an Amazon purchase that was–supposedly–charged to my Amazon account, I simply log into that account, and check my purchase history. No record of that supposed purchase? Immediate deletion of scamming email!
Once a week, I log onto all of my credit card accounts, just to be sure that there are no charges of a bogus nature. That is one extra check for whether or not something was charged to my Amazon account.
Morning. Can we please get back more toward cars, please? Thanks.
