I’m glad this wasn’t around when my sisters were teenagers. They used to go to places Ike Rodeo Drive and take pictures pretending to be opening a Jaguar, Maserati, etc. Imagine the size of that ransom demand.
As others have noted, we do not answer calls we are not sure about. We do not receive many spam calls. One of the few we have received is hilarious. A very official voice begins with “there is nothing wrong with your Social Security account.....however......”
Many, many moons ago, I received one of those emails versions of the Nigerian bank scam. “A large amount of money has been found that was left to you, but we need a little money, bank info, etc.” This was at work. We had pretty good spam filters, but nothing is perfect. Besides the obvious scam, I could tell from the email and website addresses that it was from Europe. I decided to have a little fun. I took some time to compose a response. I said something like this: “Thank you very much. I look forward to working with you. In order to establish the veracity of this communication, please have FedEx overnight $5,000 in gold bullion. Once I have received and authenticated the gold, we can talk further.”
The idiots actually responded with: “I know understand you.” I responded with:
“No kidding Dick Tracy.”