Latest Phone Scam Alert

0511/2021

[Responsibility2nd]

You may have had this happen to you already, but this scam is new to me.

My wife just got a call. It was a prerecorded machine advising her that her Amazon account was being charged for $700.00 and this call was to confirm. Press 1 now if this is incorrect.

She had the presence of mind to immediately hang up.

[BitWielder1]

I ignored it and just hung up on this and all other apparent scam calls, with no ill effects.

[Steve_Seattle]

A lot of the fake phone messages come on in mid-sentence and never tell you who they are, just what the alleged problem is.

[cherry]

yes....several times....I check my amazon account several times a month there has been no problems....

but I got a call today from "mega millions" saying I won 2.5 million....woo hoo....

[Bob434]

If one makes a mistake and answers the phone, could respond ‘something doesn’t sound quite right.. how about you let me have your name and address so I can run this by my friend In The fbi fraud division, and we will bet back to you with the info you requested. If you’ll just stay on the line for a minute, I’ll contact him right now on my other line. Hello? You still there?’

[deport]

Who answers calls not in your contact list?

**********

Pretty much the way I handle calls. If they aren’t on my
contact list they can leave a message.

[Fred Hayek]

I have been using such calls to practice my Hindi as well.
And then they ask for my name: Mikhail Yurevich Kontarksy
Address: 1 Lubyanka Square, Moskva, Russian Federation.

[READINABLUESTATE]

Dealer warranty services is not going to like the competition.

[cherry]

I think even answering these calls is a mistake...also, if these scammers give you a number to call to "get off " their calling list, I think that's a scam too...

ignore...

[Bob434]

The ones that are most annoying are the ones that yell out your name repeatedly, hoping you’ll pick up

[Responsibility2nd]

Who answers calls not in your contact list?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Business people. Especially self employed folks who depend on calls to and from potential clients and customers.

I’d get fired if I only answered calls from my contact list.

[Noumenon]

Wenja 92 destroys these jerks: https://youtu.be/dMVZehBLl5o

[Exit148]

I never answer the phone any more. If a message is left, i will get it later. Too bad it has come to this, Are iPhones next or is it already there?

[abigkahuna]

Non sequiters. That is what I answer with. I will just blurt out things like “I like rental cars” and other such nonsense. Gets them all spun up and the hang up.

[CodeToad]

Pressing buttons won’t screw you but it hooks the feeble minded in to continue until they do give up information or speak words like “Yes”.

[mass55th]

I was getting mostly emails telling me my Amazon account was locked. I was forwarding them to Amazon's fraud department, but they don't even acknowledge receipt of them, so I stopped. They probably get plenty already. I never click on any email link, even if it's from my bank. I sign into all my accounts via the bookmarked pages I've saved, never from a link in an email. Those emails have stopped, at least for now, but I always block junk mail addresses in my Apple mail program.

I've gotten texts telling me my Chase or Wells Fargo accounts have been locked because of potential fraud, but I don't have any accounts with them, and just block the number or email associated with them. I basically block every caller on my iPhone that isn't in my contact list, and since I installed Verizon's call filter, it silences, and filters out a lot of them, telling you the call was potential scam, and has been blocked. It's cut down a great deal on the calls that get through. I have the filter set to only ring for numbers in my contacts. All the other calls are silenced.

[NJRighty]

My mom is 93 years old and gets these scam calls all the time. The $700 Amazon charge, the "grandma call" (where a young person calls and says "Grandma, I'm in jail and need bail money wired to me"), the auto warranty call (she hasn't owned a car for years). Drives her crazy but thank goodness she knows to hang up right away. Elderly folks can be such easy prey for phone scams.

My favorite one was a few years ago when a scammer called and asked for my father, who had passed away ten years aearlier. They said "Hello I would like to speak to [name of my dad]. She said "So would I" and hung up.

[mass55th]

"I miss the good ole days of “Is your refrigerator running?”."

Or: "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

[hanamizu]

Anybody else ever receive this type of call?

---

At least a couple of times a week. One variation says that my order of a new iPhone is being processed and the other says my account has been compromised and that I need press 1 to talk to a Amazon rep.

The voice is obviously computer generated and not very well. I just hang up. Sometimes they leave messages on my answering machine. Amazon does have ‘report scam/phishing’ page if you want to report the phone number the scammers are using.

[goldbux]

"Marin County Morgue. Please enter your six-digit toe-tag number [followed by the swastika sign]."

[Bracketed phrase is optional.]

[mass55th]

"But sometimes it’s fun to mess with the Indian on the other end of the line."

When my oldest son gets any of those calls, he starts speaking German or Russian, and they hang up.