Scammers that actually intrude on your time via the phone are scum of the earth. Ringing the phone in someone’s house is a sort of invasion in my view. OTOH, I don’t waste my time stringing them along. They get two expletives and a hang up and that’s it. I don’t even wait for them to get any further than “I’m calling from…”
I remember in my yoof, I had a job for a major high street bank cold calling customers to try and sell them a service. It was in all honestly very nearly a scam and relied heavily on lonely old people not having their wits about them. In the team, a few colleagues were really upset when customers would be profane towards them. They’d give the usual “I don’t get paid to be sworn at and have people be rude to me.” rubbish. I recall my response was along the lines of “Yes we bloody well do get paid to be sworn at. As customer facing representatives of the bank, it’s our job to listen to whatever the customer has to damn well say about you - especially since you rang their phone and interrupted them.” Needless to say I didn’t last long there. My point being, if legitimate, but unwelcome, callers are fair game for a few four letter words, actual scammers damn sure are.
Had another recent caller saying unauthorised users were using my internet(?). As always he wanted me to start typing things on my computer to get access…
As with all these scam calls, I am always very polite, but start the conversation by asking them for THEIR security details, stating that I am unable to continue until they pass. So full name and initials, mothers maiden name and first line of their address and postcode usually does the trick.
It’s a bit childish I know, but does make me laugh when I get the very frustrated hang up…
About 20 years ago I got a scam call and in a moment of hilarity …I told them my name was Mr Walter ( an in joke in my house)
Little was I to know that for the next 15yrs (till I got a sky call blocker) I would get calls from all manner of different “companies” asking to speak to Mr Walter
It actually worked quite well… because I always knew immediately who was either a scammer…or had bought my details from a scammer…and could then leave them on hold for ages while I went to get “Mr Walter” from upstairs
It wasn’t a scam, but I had a few phonecalls from the local NHS disability support unit telling me that the cushion for my wheelchair had arrived and could I make an appointment to have it fitted? Have you ever tried to convince someone over the phone that you’re not a wheelchair user? It’s harder than you think - my opening gambit of ‘Yes, this is my name, but I am not, nor have I ever been a wheelchair user - I think you must have me mistaken for someone else with the same name’ cut no ice whatsoever with them. It just got more hilariously surreal from there.
Mark, we had a similar incident where we had someone phone us up to speak to a previous resident of our home. They had telephoned because he wasn’t answering letters etc. He moved back to New Zealand about three years ago. We explained all of this and suggested that they cancel his details etc as he no longer lived here, having returned to NZ. In order to do that they needed to speak to him. I patiently explained again that was not going to be possible and why. That rabbit hole just opened up, all in the name of ‘data protection’. We still get the letters and I have tried to telephone them to cancel it all but to no avail.
After a few calm, simple statements, I confess I laughed out loud at them. I think it was when she snapped at me ‘So, are you saying you now don’t want this cushion?’. It would have made more sense if it had turned out to be a hidden camera-style spoof, but weirdly it seemed to be real.
I do hope my namesake eventually managed to get a cushion for his wheelchair.
I’ve long suspected that a lot of these “Hello, I’m calling from Microsoft to help you fix your virus situation” are not actual scammers, but rather non-technical call centre operators hired by scammers. They’re likely given a strict script to follow, and sincerely believe that they’re helping the people they call. This would make them sound slightly more plausible, and would also give the actual criminals an additional layer of shielding in the event that anyone tries to go after them.
The last time I got one of these calls, I played along out of curiosity. I bailed shortly after they had me search my Windows directory for *.inf files, of which there are thousands. “Sir, ‘inf’ stands for ‘infection’, so we need to clean those up right away [blah blah blah]”
