If you do answer a robocall (spam call), who is most likely calling?
10- Someone telling you your car warranty is about to expire (how to they know that).
- Your long lost friend from India who can’t even pronounce your name correctly.
- Somebody trying to sell you a back brace (although the pain you get from those calls is somewhat lower).
- A solicitation for money for an organization you have never heard of before.
- Other-please explain
- 36 comments, 50 replies
- Comment
Someone offering to help me unload my nonexistent timeshare.
“If”. Unrecognized phone number = it goes to voicemail.
@narfcake I have Nomorobo, but they occasionally get through and leave voicemail; it’s usually either the car warranty or some charity.
@RiotDemon Do you hit 1 and use the SSN of the LifeLock guy?
@yakkoTDI that would be good but I let call screening talk to them.
Usually the car warranty.
@Ignorant When my brother-in-law gets those calls he tells them he’d LOVE to extend the warranty on his 20 year old 4WD Toyota with 300,000+ miles.
He’s not joking about the numbers.
@blaineg @Ignorant I wonder how they’d react to one of Aging Wheels’ cars. I doubt they’d underwrite the Trabant, Reliant Robin, or Yugo, but the (dead) Wheego Life and Coda(s) are under 10 years old …
@blaineg @Ignorant
I was expecting a call back from someone and they called asking to extend the warranty on my car. I told them I didn’t have a car but had a bike and wanted to extend the warranty on that past 30,000 pedals. Sometimes it’s more fun to fuck with them.
Offering to lower my credit card payment. How do you know if/about any credit cards.
I have been getting A LOT of offers for a great 3-4 night vacation someplace decent. Catch is I have to cough up a deposit on that call. They are not scams per se, but lock you into a trip 1) you may never get around to taking and 2) are a sneaky way to lock you in to a sales pitch when you get there for a timeshare which I will never do.
@cbilyak
I’ve taken 2 vacations from those offerings and enjoyed both of them. I’ve never had any intentions of buying a time share. Just for one half of the day I have to half listen to some bullshit and keep saying no. But then the rest of the vacation is mine to enjoy, sit in the beach and relax. It’s not for some people but when I was younger and didn’t have a lot of extra money but wanted to vacation it worked out great.
Directv is calling because I qualify for a 50% discount. Just call them back to activate my savings.
Amazon calling to confirm the $350 order charged to my card.
@blaineg I got one of those one time and talked to them for a few minutes before I went to the computer and looked at my account and figured out it was a spam call and hung up in the middle of the spammer’s sentence.
@blaineg Just in case you and others haven’t seen it yet.
@blaineg @yakkoTDI Thanks for that video. I wondered how these things worked. Where the scammer coaches them on what to say to the bank or family members is slick.
@Felton10 Have you ever been able to phone a human at Amazon?
It beggars belief that they would call you.
Or the Police / Sheriff officer’s association calling for donations.
They get all bent out of shape when I ask which city or county force they represent. They’ve never been able to answer that question correctly.
@blaineg and if you ask how much actually goes to the “charity” chances are it’s avout 10%.
@blaineg retired LEO here the PBA will NEVER call you out of the blue to solicit funds unless you’ve donated in the past but even if you did always be wary of phone solicitation and if you’re inclined to donate to that specific charity tell them you’ll donate using their official website.
@blaineg I actually get quite a few calls from Sheriff / Police association that seem legitimate. Often they are selling tickets to some fund raising event (usually some ancient band you have to be north of 50 to have even heard of). Even though I have always rebuffed them on the phone, on two occasions I actually went and bought tickets at the door.
The vehicle I sold 5 years ago to a junkyard needs an extended warranty.
@f00l Obviously or you wouldn’t have sold it.
I also love the e-mails that my Amex card has been compromised and they are suspending my ability to charge until I contact them which is odd given I haven’t had an Amex account for over 10 years.
@Felton10 I appreciate the “your {popular social media platform} account has been suspended” ones instead. I mean, it’s a good thing that my non-existent account has been suspended before I made one.
@Felton10 always this!!
I’d say 50% car warranty.
10% something to do with an unspecified credit card.
10% something to do with social security and getting back on my feet with a new job (never lost my job).
10% Ticketmaster (seriously… Never use Ticketmaster. I used them once now they’re trying to sell me timeshares nonstop… No concert is worth that)
10% the FBI are after me and I’m about to be arrested… Blah blah blah
5% a special offer for at&t customers… I’m not an at&t customer.
5% misc other scams.
Seriously though, how can anyone fall for that car warranty scam anymore. Hasn’t everyone received that scam 100 times over?
Split between those helpful warnings to let me know my car’s warranty is about to expire, and offers to buy my house.
Is the house buying thing just in my area, or nationwide? I probably receive a dozen or 15 calls and txts a week inquiring if I’m interested in selling my house “for fair market value, with no inspections required!”
@ruouttaurmind I’ve only had two offers to buy my house and both were for a house I didn’t own 15 mins away from where I actually live.
@OnionSoup My best guess is they harvest information from the county recorder’s records. Which are unfortunately public record and published online in an easily harvestable format. In my case I have three houses in my name so I don’t know if that tags me as a speculator and likely target, or if they just call everyone. I wouldn’t mind knowing where the phone number came from though. I don’t list it in the county’s records.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@ruouttaurmind the housing thing mainly started because of covid. They are trying to take advantage of people that can’t pay their mortgages. Buying their house for under value and flipping them since the market is great for sellers.
@RiotDemon I do not disagree. Though I’ve been receiving a high volume of those calls and txt for at least 18 months or so.
@ruouttaurmind I have been getting these both texts and calls well over a year. Some give an address that I do own (and want to sell but need to take care of a few issues first). Texts I don’t respond. Calls I don’t answer if I don’t now the number unless I am expecting a call. I have been wondering if I am on some naughty list or what. I do own more than one property in the city. Maybe that targets me?
@speediedelivery
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Multiple properties makes us look like speculators maybe? Or slum lords?
@ruouttaurmind @speediedelivery
I’ve been in the same house for >30 yrs, and only own one, but have gotten a couple of texts about ‘reaching out to me if I want to sell it’. They have the correct address, and are hitting my cell phone which I don’t think is in any way associated with the address… so, yeah… weird.
By me answering I assume you mean my voice mail answering.
It is almost all the car warranty crap but I sometimes get the call about my Apple account being locked out due to suspicious activity.
medicare card. Old folks get these asshats.
/giphy ass hat
@cattylaq Most of the time they try to sell you some medical device as they know that is an easy thing to bill medicare for and a high profit item for them. Sucks being old.
@cattylaq @Felton10
I’ve been getting rascal scooter ads and aarp stuff in the mail since I was 18. I figure by the time I’m ready to retire they’ll assume me long dead and finally leave me be.
@cattylaq I got a Medicare card when I turned 65, but I have yet to get an asshat. Did I get overlooked? Where do I apply? I’m not sure what I would do with one, but I do hate being left out.
Most of the time these calls are computer dialed voice activated so if you pick up the phone and never say a word, it eventually disconnects. I have two land lines in my house (VOI) one which is attached to my fax machine. Since the fax line is first in numerical sequence, it gets a lot of calls but since we never give that number out, we know every call coming into it is spam.
What I really want to do is make a recording from the internet of people having loud sex and play that on the phone whenever there is spam call. The sounds would guarantee it would be connected to a person and it would be interesting to see how long they listened before they hung up. Main purpose would be to waste their time as they are wasting mine by calling me.
@Felton10 I wonder if Kitboga’s AI will go further …
Re:scam is currently offline and in redevelopment. That mainly handles email-based scammers, though.
I have won a vacation because I stayed in one of their hotels. Mostly Marriot, but sometimes Hyatt
I get a lot of the car warranty calls telling it is my last chance… if only.
A lot of Visa card calls.
This is Microsoft and your computer has a problem.
“Police” organizations.
Some back brace calls (that one is a Medicare fraud and Federal crime.
Very rare calls about a relative stuck in a foreign country and needs money to get out.
No calls about selling our house. Except today I got one from a real local realtor!
What did I forget?
@andyw Not much. Thanks.
@andyw Usually it’s “Windows” that calls us, not Microsoft.
My wife’s standard answer is “We don’t own a computer”, that completely breaks their script. She thought that up herself, I’m so proud of her!
@andyw I left out the calls about reducing my utility bills by switching.
@andyw @blaineg On the rare occasion that I do answer one of the calls from “Microsoft”, I say that I got busted for hacking the FBI and cannot own or use a computer for the next 10 years. That stumps them.
@blaineg @macromeh I’m surprised they don’t ask for instructions on how to do it!
car warranty people. I tell them that it’s under water.
Them: oh, it’s ok if you owe more than it’s worth.
Me: no, it was in a flood last week and it’s underwater. So how about that warranty?
charities… I ask what are the administrative costs of the charity. By law, they have to tell you. When it’s something like 85-90% I say that’s not a charity, it’s a tax free business and that’s bullshit.
real estate investors wanting to buy my house…
Me: if I sell to you, do I have to dig up the bodies in the backyard?
Them: uh, what?
Me: yeah and if you want to buy it, you’re gonna have to help. Let me know how many people you’re bringing to help out so I know how many shovels to get.
the “IRS” or social security. I ask them if they filed form ID-10T before calling me. If the refuse to go off script and they sound young, I ask them personal questions. Are the married? Do they have kids? Do they know what they are doing is illegal? What would happen if they went to jail? Their parents and in-laws would be so ashamed! Their kids would be living in the streets. If they still don’t go off script, I found out from an Indian coworker that the ultimate insult is to insult their mother’s cooking. So I heard that their mother’s cooking tastes like dog shit. That usually ends up in them finally telling me to fuck off
Thanks to the call blockers, I get so few of these now but it’s still fun to screw with them.
@ironcheftoni Love the bodies one.
Somehow Visa and Mastercard have stopped being competitors and joined forces to have a computer call me repeatedly to offer me lower rates. The one time I talked to the scammers I told them I had an AmEx, so he three way called amex customer service, I guess to prove he was associated with amex? When amex got on the line I asked if their ANI information could identify this caller as he was a scammer. The scammer disconnected amex and asked me “do you still have that card in your handy? I want you to take it and stick it in your ass.”
I assumed this was the height of Indian money scammer insult, until I read the thing about my mother’s cooking above.
Someone offering me up to $250,000 business line it credit. My phone number is tied to the records for my DBA. I also get the car warranty occasionally. My boyfriend gets several calls daily saying a friend or family member has stayed at a Marriott hotel recently and he qualifies for a discount. 4-5 times a day. He tells them to fuck off all the time.
I kept my West Coast/Bay Area phone # when I moved back east. Most of my VMs are in Chinese, although I do sometimes get ones about new weight loss miracles (most of those are spam texts, though.) I don’t have any outstanding loans, so maybe that’s why I don’t get the usual spam phone calls. I’m currently waiting for an unknown person to call/come plant some trees and shrubs I bought from the local nursery, so I’m more likely to answer a local unknown call until I get that scheduled.
If the number looks local I may answer thinking it’s business. Usually it’s car warranty or electric provider.
@callow They are adept at spoofing numbers local to you.
@andyw I know but I hate putting my customers through the screening. I do add everyone to my contacts as soon as we talk.
@callow Luckily, I do not have any customers and most of the calls I want come from people in my “address book” as we old folks like to call it.
I’ve started pressing 1 on those robocalls. I go through with all the questions they ask but give really vague or ridiculous answers. After a few minutes of this, they’ll catch on that I’m messing with them and hang up.
Since I started doing this, I’ve gotten less calls. Maybe they flag me as someone that’ll waste their time and don’t call anymore? Maybe it’s coincidence. Either way, I’m okay with it.
@capguncowboy Good idea if you can play along with them and resist the urge to tell them to fuck off.
@Felton10 that usually comes at the end of the call when they call me out on it.
I had a guy call me an asshole when I told him I was born in 1922. We’d been on the phone for about 20 minutes with me giving him BS answers to all of his questions. I just laughed. I almost felt bad for him but made sure to get the “fuck you” in there before he disconnected
@capguncowboy I don’t feel bad making them get on the phone and staying quiet, but I have mixed feeling about engaging them for any length of time. After all they are only trying to make a living, but on the other hand they are a constant pain in my and everyone else’s ass.
It was email, not a phone call, but I got a panicked message from my friend down the street. She was stranded in the Philippines, having traveled there to help her mother who had cancer. (Her mother lives here in town.) She urgently needed a lot of money for the “surgery operation” for her mother’s leukemia.
I strung the scammer along for about a week before he finally gave up on me.
Google call screening is one of the best creations of the past few years. Everything happens through text on the screen and I see a live transcript. Most of the time the call just disconnects. Sometimes the machine launches into its spiel. But the best was the one that just said “Jesus Christ this is ridiculous” and hung up.
@djslack I was wondering how that plays out. I use Google screening often on unrecognized numbers, but have never seen any response from callers - just disconnects.
One of the “stranded” calls was about my granddaughter being stranded without money, etc. Since she was about 4 years old they didn’t get far. And would not have anyway.
The other was “from” a neighbor and friend who is a state representative who was “stranded” in the Philippines with her husband who is a lawyer with a mega-company. Not very likely they were stranded.
I’m using Google call screening on my cell phone and it helps a lot.
@andyw My mom got one of the stranded grandchild calls. I’m glad that she doesn’t fall for any of that and it was from her non-existent “grandson”. She played along and said she would help out the kid stuck in jail. She got handed off to the handler to get her credit card to pay bail. She told him. You know, he’s pulled this crap way too many times, the little brat can just rot in jail!
Has anyone ever gotten a call from themselves with their own name on the caller ID. I have gotten a call on line two showing my name and line 1 number and the light on the phone for line 1 is lit up showing it is in use. Scary shit.
@Felton10 Did you pick up line one to see what was happening?
Different but similar: It seemed like everyone in this town was getting spam calls from their own number for a few weeks. Right after discussing this with my son, I got a call from me. About five minutes later he got a call from himself. Do you think they were listening?
@callow After the first few times, both on the line that they were calling on and line 2, I picked it up and was going to tell them if anyone answered that I would never buy anything from anyone who had to use my number to get me to answer. But one ever said anything.
@callow @Felton10 No, but only because it is probably not worth their time! It is also dumb for them to spoof your own number, as you know it is spam. I’ve had numbers close to mine, but never mine-yet.
@andyw @callow I get a lot of spam calls on my cell phone from my old (20 years ago) area code up in Maryland, but I know who is calling me from that area code and all the rest I disregard.
@Felton10 not my own, but I got a call from my friends mom’s old landline here in town, that i had forgotten to delete out of my phone when she moved to Alaska…
usually the scam calls i get are:
Our record so far was 15 robo-calls from the car warranty folks on one Sunday afternoon on our home phone. All from different numbers/area codes. All went to voice mail without picking up.
1-2 calls a day asking if I want to sell my house.
@Quantumcat Feel free to use the dead bodies lines. Guarantees them to stop calling!
I also get periodic e-mails from some high ranking government official or lawyer from a country I never have heard of who is the executor of the estate of a recently deceased individual. The estate is always worth millions of dollars and he has pinpointed me as the person to receive the bulk of his estate. Lucky me.
Here is one of those goofy e-mails I just got
Interim Head of Luggage/Baggage
(Operations,Maintenance,Transportation)
Honolulu International Airport
300 Rodgers Boulevard,
Honolulu, HI 96819, USA
CELL: 917-xxx-xxxx or text me,
Attention Beneficiary,
I have very vital information to give to you, but first I must have your trust before I review it to you because it may cost me my job,so I need somebody that I can trust for me to be able to review the secret to you.
I am Mr. James .T. Moris, Head of luggage/baggage storage facilities (Operations) here at Honolulu International Airport USA, During my recent withheld package routine check at the Airport Storage Vault, I
discovered an abandoned shipment from a Diplomat from Africa and when scanned it revealed an undisclosed sum of money in a Metal Trunk Box
weighing approximately 110kg.
The consignment was abandoned because the Contents of the consignment was not properly declared by the consignee as “MONEY” rather it was declared as personal effect to avoid interrogation and also the inability of the diplomat to pay for the United States Non Inspection Charges which is $3,700USD. On my assumption the consignment is still left in our Storage Vault here at the Honolulu International air port till date,the details of the consignment including your name, your
email address and the official documents from the United Nations office in Geneva are tagged on the Trunk box.
However, to enable me confirm if you are the actual recipient of this consignment, as the Interim Head of Luggage/Baggage Unit, I will advise you provide your current Phone Number and Full Address, to
enable me cross check if it corresponds with the address on the official documents tagged. Note that this consignment is supposed to have been returned to the United States Treasury Department OR to its
country of origin as unclaimed delivery,I will not be able to receive your details on my official email account. So in order words to enable me cross check your details, I will advise you send the required details to my private email address for quick processing and response. Once I confirm you as the actual recipient of the trunk box, I can get
everything concluded within 48 hours upon your acceptance and proceed to your address for delivery.
Lastly, be informed that the reason I have taken it upon myself to contact you personally about this abandoned consignment is because I want us to transact this business and share the money 70% for you and 30% for me since the consignment have not yet been return to the United States Treasury Department after being abandoned by the
diplomat so immediately the confirmation is made, I will go ahead and pay for the United States Non Inspection Fee of $3,700 dollars and arrange for the box to be delivered to your doorstep Or I can bring it
by myself to avoid any more trouble but you have to assure me of my 30% share.
I wait to hear from you urgently if you are still alive and I will appreciate if we can keep this deal confidential.
Please get back to me via my private Email: xxxxxx xxxx@aol.com for further directives:
You can call me on my telephone number and drop a message.
Thank you.
James .T. Moris
CELL: +1 917-xxx-xxxx or text me,
E-Mail: xxxxxxxxxx@aol.com
Spammers must think Florida is a gold mine to sell people stuff that they don’t need. Fully 75% of the calls we get are from spammers. Got one today from someone today telling me they needed more information to do the genetic work up as part of my cardio assessment. I said fine-tell me which of my doctors ordered it. They said huh? Told them well if someone requested it, then it was going to be forwarded to one of my dtrs-which dtr was it that they were sending it to. They said they would have to get back to me with that info. Still waiting for the call.
I’m about 10% of the time I will answer to mess with them.
My brother has a method that I can only aspire to.
When a Windows/Microsoft scammer called, he played along as a complete Windows noob (not knowing where “Start” was). They said “It’s on the lower left hand side of the screen”. So he told them he was very sensitive to the word “hand” since he had lost his hands in a tragic accident. So they tried every way they could to tell him what to do without using the word “hand”. Each time they slipped, he told them the full story of why he was sensitive about the word “hand”. Eventually, they had multiple people on the phone trying to coach him without using the word “hand”. (Somehow they never asked him how he was using his computer without hands). After about 20 minutes, he said “Oh! This is for Microsoft Windows?! I have an Apple.” They hung up.
@mehcuda67 Now I kind of want to get a call…
different telemarketers