Posted on 03/09/2024 9:31:27 PM PST by nickcarraway
Rule 1: If the person has an Indian accent its a scam
My boss ever texted me that I’d reply with GFY... and he’d of expected that.
“Trust your gut if the offer sounds too good to be true”
My instincts tell me that it’s not so much the “Nigerian prince” anymore as much as it is today’s college university crowd, grads and undergrads, and even tech savvy younger Americans who are behind some of these sophisticated scam operations. Young and daring, they’ll take to paths of least resistance as shortcuts to “success” because they can, and off the beaten path they go. It’s likely that the majority of scammers like these have political agendas as well- Woke-ist, LGBTQ+, foreign nationals, communist, progressive, By Any Means Necessary anti-American subversives, etc. Plus, we have these migrant criminals who, whether they belong to or owe something to drug cartels or not, may be looking to set up shop where they can go about their “business”. They are more convincing when they make themselves appear to be naive and benign but don’t let the smooth taste fool you. Someday it could really be your own grandkid in AI form trying to bilk you out of a small fortune because they can’t wait for their inheritance or to have it go to somebody else first.
Every politician. Every diplomat. Every Bureaucract, advisor, NGO president in washington DC.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3731774/posts
Scambaiting is a way to fight back against these pukes, who prey on the elderly and trusting souls.
The idea is that every min of their time that you waste is a minute where they can’t take Grandma’s retirement money.
If I am having a slow day, and I get an email announcing a $399 credit card charge for tech support, I’ll call that 844 number for tech support after blocking my number. I tell them that my name is Nigel Tufnell (or sometimes Graham Chapman), and my address is 1060 West Addison in Chicago.
I let the charade run as long as I’m entertained. Sometimes they get a lecture at the end of my call.
Some guys are so good at Scambaiting that they make a living out of it, and stream their calls on Twitch. They can hack into the scammer’s PCs and delete files and steal back gift cards while they get cursed out in a foreign language. It’s hilarious. https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4087042/posts
That sounds like a fun pastime.
the difficulty with krapcoins is that it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between the fraudulent krapcoin scams and the “legitimate” drapcoin scams ...
I sort out emails that I expect to get. Everything else is suspect. Anything that comes in at random, I do a who.is domain search on the Return Path address and the unsubscribe URL found in the email source code. I usually find that the domain is listed as being form a foreign country and is less that 24 hours old at the time the email was sent. Sometimes I will run the email header through an online analysis tool to find other questionable things like the SPF Authentication or the DMARC Record status. I get sometimes about a dozen a day. Those emails are usually about giving me something free or heavily discounted, a package tracking or something of that nature.
For scam emails that are spoofing an actual company, I take the time to report them to the abuse email at the real company.
I usually let call roll into voice mail but if I have time, I answer unknown numbers in Chinese. If I have a lot of time and I am in the mood, I answer and talk them in circles for as long as possible. Usually they will get to a point and hang up. However, a few times I got them to scream swear words at me as they hang up. When that happens, I know I have done my part.
A Nigerian Princess just sent me an email wanting to marry me and offer me a job as CEO of IBM, but first i had to buy one bazillion NigerianKoins, blacktop my driveway, wire her a hundred thousand dollars in earnest money, give her access to my computer to fix it because she knows it’s eaten up by a gaggle of viruses, and sell me ten brand new luxurious timeshare condos in Haiti ...
Could anyone here tell me if this a scam?
On Tuesday, I was the GOP Primary Precinct Election Judge. Late in the day one of the voters that I knew by sight, but not name, asked me: Are foreigner’s voting in this election?
I answered No. That you had to be a citizen of the USA to vote. Asked him why he asked, he said his wife was not a citizen. And asked him how long they had been married. And what country she was from.
He answered that they had been married 7 years (seems like she had been with him 10 years) and that she was Russian. I told him that having live here with him that long it should be easy to gain citizenship.
I did not tell him, that if she got here citizenship, she might leave him. /sarcasm. I have never met her.
It’s amazing how dumb people can be sometimes. I had a secretary one time give the “Alabama State Troopers’ Association” her checking account number over the phone for a fundraiser. Fortunately for her they only got her for $100 or so instead of the $20 she thought she was giving them.
I’ve watched ScammerPayback and love it.
Thanks for helping hold down the fort like that. I don’t have the savvy to do that to people.
One time I got a call and answered it on y cell phone, not landline, and they started with *your computer has a problem* and I just laughed at the guy. I said that this was a cell phone and he had NO idea what computer was tied to this number. And then hung up.
I suppose that all it did was show him that there are people out there wise to them.
We've done that, too. Some companies are very grateful and thank us and follow up with us. Others don't seem much to care.
I get the same response from companies. I still try to do may part of stopping these criminals. All of these scammers should be rounded up and dealt with appropriately.
“My baseline assumption anymore is that everything is a scam.
Every phone call
Every text message
Every email
Every advertisement
Everything”
Exactly. Just had someone send me a “PayPal” message thanking me for contributing “x” amount of bitcoin. If I did not do that, please call this number for a refund. One problem…I don’t have an active PayPal account. I also checked my bank accounts and it showed no activity. Trust NOTHING you receive online unless you initiated the contact, and then be wary of that.
These scams will always be a way of life. Like herpes, taxes and the rest. The majority of population is devoid of even a shred of critical thinking. On any subject….
Yesterday, I read a local story where a Wal-mart clerk prevented an elderly man from being scammed out of $5,000 via a call stating a warrant was out for his arrest for missing jury duty. Luckily she questioned him and recognized the scam.
I just searched and found the story has now gone national.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/10662001/walmart-worker-stops-gift-card-scam/
It’s good to be cynical about most things these days.
One I encountered recently was on Facebook marketplace. I listed an item for sale, quickly got a response from someone wanting to buy it. He said he would send the cash, I just had to text him a code. Believe it or not, “another person” (probably him under another name) tried the same stunt the next day.
Timeshares crack me up the most. 99% of ads you see on TV deal with GETTING RID of timeshares...in fact, I’ve never seen an ad on TV touting a timeshare (just post cards that are mass-mailed).
It’s kind of like watching a football game and the only car commercials you see are from companies will to rid you of your car.
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