Watch Out! These 10 Phone Call Scams Could Steal Your Money

Readers Digest ^ | no date given | Marissa Laliberte

[Leaning Right]

Those scammers are sneakier than you’d think, but you need to protect your money and information.

[Leaning Right]

An older friend of mine almost fell for the tech support scam. So this article might be something you'd want to pass along to older friends and relatives.

Here are the 10 scams. Details are at the link.

1. “Can you hear me?”
2. IRS impersonators
3. Bank calls
4. One ring
5. Virtual kidnapping
6. Tech support
7. Grandparent scam
8. Lucky winner
9. Donation collections
10. Jury eligibility

[trisham]

1. Don’t answer the phone unless it’s someone that you know.

[mountainlion]

I had a phone call and when I answered I heard a tone and what sounded like office background sounds. I hung up and went back to my computer and the camera was on. I had never used the camera on that computer. The camera is now covered with 3M electrical tape.

[HangnJudge]

Don’t answer your phone if you don’t recognize the number
Legitimate callers will leave a message
Don’t say yes to anything asked by a stranger
Any suspicious call, hang up immediately

Blocking the number doesn’t usually help, the caller I’d is generally spoofed
But if it makes you feel good, go ahead

[Pearls Before Swine]

11. “This is the Social Security Office. Your Social Security number has been suspended because of suspicious activity in your account. Please press ‘1’ to speak to a Social Security official.”

I got three calls for this yesterday, from three different 866 exchange numbers (Nothing good ever comes from 866).

After ignoring the first two, I pressed “1”. A human answered, “Social Security, how may I help you?” I replied, “What’s up? You called me?” <Immediate click, since obviously I wasn’t a candidate for phishing for identity fraud.

[I want the USA back]

The telephone has been made almost useless by these scammers. They send you a fake number that shows in your caller id. This renders caller id and the “do not call list” useless. Worse: the number that they send is often the number of a legitimate enterprise. They have used, among others, the number of a government agency and of a wireless telephone carrier.
Legislators are powerless because of the design of the caller id system. It needs to be rethought and changed, so that the real number is always known, and in the case of voice over IP, the IP address.
Temporary measure: calls from outside of the USA must be identified as to name of carrier and country.
Within the USA, laws can be changed and enforced. The penalty for sending a fake caller id should be public hanging.

[Leaning Right]

> I hung up and went back to my computer and the camera was on. <

Wow. That’s creepy. I’d love to know what that was all about.

[T-Bird45]

“1. Don’t answer the phone unless it’s someone that you know.”

So easy yet some just can’t ignore a ringing phone. I apply this rule multiple times per day and some even take advantage of leaving a message. Very rarely is it somebody I need to call back, most are running a scam with an opening about unpaid college loans which were closed out over five years ago, long before the scammers came along with this hook.

[mountainlion]

I’d love to know what that was all about. ....

C_A or China I suppose.

I now have RFI shields on my credit cards also.

[Alberta's Child]

I got one of those IRS scam calls from someone who said a warrant was going to be issued for my arrest if I didn't send a wire transfer of $5,000+ to some nitwit with an Indian accent claiming to be an IRS agent.

I asked him why this was such a big deal and made up a story about how I paid $37 million in Federal income taxes last year. The funny thing is those dopes never break stride or change their "sales pitch" ... as if someone who pays $37 million in Federal taxes is going to: (1) answer his phone for a caller he doesn't know, and (2) wire anyone even $1 based on what some jackass on the line tells him to do.

I saw another story online about a person who got one of those calls and told the scammer: "I wish the IRS would arrest me. I'm about to be sentenced to a long prison term for molesting children." LOL.

[moovova]

“This is the Social Security Office. Your Social Security number has been suspended...”

Got the same call. I pulled my Social Security card out and, sure enough, my SS number had disappeared from my card.

[Leaning Right]

> Temporary measure: calls from outside of the USA must be identified as to name of carrier and country. <

Yep. That would probably knock out 90% of those scam calls. Because most of them I get seem to come from India.

[dmet]

You are right. Caller ID is a mess. They should be sued for charging for a service that does not deliver due to their flaw.
Class Action anyone ?

[Leaning Right]

> So easy yet some just can’t ignore a ringing phone. <

That’s right, and it’s particularly true with older people.

[Midwesterner53]

there is a scam involving Direct TV, they call and use the same number as actual Direct TV. They offer you a 50% discount on your service but the wake up call is when you have to pay them using amazon or ebay gift cards. I have gotten calls from them several times after listening most of the way through the first time.

[susannah59]

All those, plus don’t answer the phone if you don’t recognize the number. That’s first and foremost.

I think not answering the phone is very difficult for a lot of older people to do. I think that goes back to the time before cell phones and before phone scams were such a problem- if your phone rang, you answered it. It was for you or someone in your family, except for the occasional wrong number which was generally a misdial.

I work with older people and I talk about these scams frequently. Usually, the opportunity comes up because their phone rings, often more than once, while I’m talking with them.

I hate these lowlifes with a passion, because they target the vulnerable.

Besides passing the article along to older friends and relatives, pass it on to the sons and daughters of the older friends and relatives. They can, should, sit down and discuss the issues with them and also take the opportunity to program the phones so that Grandma or Grandpa knows when Joe or Jill or whoever is calling. They also need to make sure that the person’s voice mail is properly set up; they should also take responsibility for checking the phone and voice mail regularly if Grandma or Grandpa can’t do that for themselves.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t have functional voicemail or have full mail boxes.

[Pearls Before Swine]

I pulled my Social Security card out and, sure enough, my SS number had disappeared from my card.

That's a pretty neat trick!

More seriously, this is a rather pernicious fraud, because it targets the unsophisticated and/or feeble who are absolutely dependent on that monthly check.

[cnsmom]

I got an IRS call at 6:00 pm on a Friday afternoon and knew instantly it was a scam nobody in government works at that hour.

[MayflowerMadam]

“1. ‘Can you hear me?’”

Basically, don’t say “Yes” to any question under any circumstances. You can respond (if you want to) using other words that can be taken as a yes. If a caller may or may not be legit and asks me, “Is this MayflowerMadam?”, I might say “It is”, but never “Yes”.

“An older friend of mine almost fell for the tech support scam.”

An older person in my quilting group DID fall for the tech support scam about 10 years ago. It made her life a living hell for a couple years. Can’t recall all the details but IIRC it messed with her bank and credit card accounts.

[Tucker39]

Last week when I fired up my laptop a rogue outfit from Bangladesh or somewhere took it over. They posed as Microsoft, there to “help” me. When he asked for my name I knew the next would be for my plastic number. I immediately shut down and took the puter to my local tech. He got rid of them. My puter is now equipped with Virtual Private Network software. My other devices are, too.