I was sitting here posting away and having fun on the What Is This? post I did, when My phone rang. It was a familiar number so I answered it!
Well, Surprise, Surprise ! It was a very official voice telling me that my Social Security Number would be Annuled and pulled from service,Why? Well, apparently I did some illegal things which involved said number and It was determined on a Federal Level I had commited a crime that resulted in this annullment!
Now thank God I know better. The Feds work by Mail on things like this, and questions they may have . When I asked to speak to a real person the thing clicked off and so I blocked it. This seems a more prevalent thing happening to us older folks. So my advice is Block them or Call your provider to see if they can find out who.
Then maybe something can be done. I seriously worry that some folks with Mild Dementia or emotional issues, would spill their info not realizing they had been both Phished and Scammed.
One thing I do often do is reply to them with the same accent-A throwback to my days as a voice-over actor with Voice one in Atlanta. Commercials can be fun, This is even moreso-exceptin, I only get paid in laughs!
You can imagine when they get an answer sounding like Brando in the " Godfather" what the expression is on their face.
What I fear is those folks who are a little shy on the point of these and what they think the Govt. would do. They do not know how this stuff actually works.
I remember a story a few years back where a gentleman received one of those scamming phone calls telling him his information had been turned over to the local sheriff for his instant arrest if he didn’t fork over the demanded sum.
He strung the caller along for a while, while that threat was repeated several times. Finally he asked the caller: “Do you know who the local sheriff is?”
I noticed about a year ago that scammers will use a phone number that has my area code or it is the number of someone I know. The only way to tell it is a telemarketer is the +1 that is in front of the number.
Apparently the technology exists for the scumbuckets to display a local area code, even if they’re calling from the other side of the world. I’ve gotten to the point that I almost never actually answer my phone when it rings. If I recognize a voice or story on a message, then I’ll call back.
I have a recording of the play Hamlet performed in the Klingon language. Yes, I am not kidding. When I get a scammer call I answer the phone and play Hamlet. Usually, the scammer tries to carry on a conversation with the recording.
I dropped my LAN line and only use my cell phone now. So, when I get a call that I don’t recognize, I let it go to voice mail. If they don’t leave a voice mail, the number gets blocked.
If you want to play along with them,torment them,or waste their time for fun,i do sometimes,but I heard to avoid saying yes or okay or anything affirmative,if they record your voice saying that they can use it against you saying you agreed to something.
Used to get about six to ten a day at one point. Finally just started answering and speaking either Russian or German. They always hang up pretty quick and pretty much stopped calling.
My scam calls have gone down by 98 percent. When they get my machine they hear,“Thank you for calling Cactus in the butt. All representatives are currently busy inserting cacti. If thi is a sales call, we have no money, you will have to accept a cactus in the butt. If this a call soliciting donations, we still have no money but we will give you a cactus in the butt.” They hang up and never call back again. Problem calls solved.
I have gotten those phonecalls too. A guy with a thick Indian accent called to tell me that I hadn’t been “paying your taxes properly, and there is a warrant out for your arrest. We have also placed a lien on your Social Security number”. So, as a guy who does contract work for several Federal law enforcement agencies, I told the last guy a half-truth. I said to him “Well, it just so happens that I do contract work with the FBI, so I have them on speed dial. Why don’t you hold on the line and I’ll get an agent on a conference call with us both so we can get this all straightened out.”. I heard a brief moment of silence on the other end, and then “click”. LOL. For some strange reason, they have never tried to call me again. Of course, I wouldn’t have wasted that agent’s time with that non-sense, but he did get a good laugh about it when I told him about it a couple of days later.
I get several of those calls every day, if I do not recognize the number or it is out of my area, I simply answer and immediately hang up.
I have a neighbor that received a call supposedly from Social Security telling then they had an old card and that SS was issuing new cards and offered to expedite their new card if they could have the existing Medicare number, guess what? the medicare number on you card is your SS number. My neighbor hang up.
Once I received a call from a woman saying, in very deep voice, that she was from Microsoft Tech Support and that my computer was infected with a bad virus and I needed to call a number to get it fixed immediately, I answer by telling her that she most be mistaken, because, I did not have a computer!
It was a lie but she did not know that and hang up.