How to End Scam Calls

Most people just put the phone down when they receive a call from a scammer.

Others may say or shout rude things then slam the phone down and some try to convince the scammer to stop their illegal activities.

It doesn’t matter really what you do but you may as well have some fun at the scammer’s expense – after all – she phoned you to steal your money

George suggests – One good way I found was to say “you need to talk to the boss, I’ll just get him” put the phone down and carry in with your work. Come back 10 minutes later and hang up, the line will be dead.  Also, you could say “there’s someone at the door, I’ll just let them in”, put the phone down and hang up 10 minutes later.

Repetition, repetition, repetition.  brush with the law. What I say to scammers (and it works every time) is “can you please hold on for a second?” which they do… then I say “sorry about the wait just had to connect your call with the police… so carry on! What were you saying to me?” Straight away they will put the phone down on you!!!

Stanley says When I can be bothered to answer them, I usually say something along the lines: “How interesting, my husband/son/daughter works for the same company, they can sort it out in the morning. If they have not hung up on me, I’ll carry on with “not knowing what they actually do but it’s something secret which could be to do with investigations”.

It seems work quite well I don’t usually get very far into my tale! I have fun and hopefully they have a few moments of worry.

Ellie said A simple question is the answer. I find that responding to cold callers with “Did l ask you to call me?” has a 90 per cent good result. The phone goes dead or sometimes they respond “no”. One even managed to express his anger with a rather rude expletive.

Harry prefers to Play the easy target. If I am in a playful mood my first comment after their initial spiel is to ask if they would like my bank details? You would be surprised how many reply, “Yes please”!

Take on a new identity. I answered: “City Morgue, please supply number of corpse and date of death.” That worked, no problem.

Anne prefers silence. Once you have picked up the phone, wait for the caller to speak. Normally automated systems kick in on a voice activation which then gets picked up by a person from the calling centre. If you don’t like what you hear just hang up without saying anything. If it’s a genuine caller, they will call you back.

Paul goes for the polite response. With call centres now presenting me with calls several times a week appearing to be from various parts of the UK (and even appearing to be from personal mobiles) I am always polite if I happen, rarely, to answer the call. I realise many of these people are probably working for peanuts under terrible conditions so if they are not scammers, I can tolerate them long enough to say “No thank you. Goodbye.”

David is more confrontational and tries to poke holes in their offer.

Some years ago I was informed that I had won a large amount of money in a competition, but before they could send me the money, I would have to transfer a sum to them to cover transfer and administration costs. I told them how pleased I was and would be happy to pay them – this would be very simple, just deduct the amount from my winnings. They put the phone down.

Andrew Warren, Arundel says Does your mother know?

I once had a scammer call me who seemed really nice but I wasn’t fooled. I asked him if his mother knew what he did for a living and when he replied yes I asked if his mother was proud of him. He told me that his mother was very proud of him, my response to that was that if I were his mother I would be very, very ashamed of him. With that I said goodbye and disconnected the call.

Julie Farr suggests Too much information is a good answer.

Play the scammers at their own game and have a bit of amusement as well. When the opening try-on was “how are you today”, I treated it as a ‘polite’ enquiry.

My response was: “nice of you to ask but I am having a terrible day my haemorrhoids are really causing me a lot of pain and the diarrhoea is dreadful. I haven’t been able to get out for days so it is lovely to get your phone call and I can really talk to someone…”

The conversation ended suddenly as he rang off and never called again.

Have fun

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

Australian Fake Kidnappings

This fake kidnapping ploy started in Taiwan with Chinese gangs preying on Taiwanese students and the gangs involved have started up in Australia, targeting overseas students.

The parents of the ‘kidnapped’ student get a call saying their son or daughter has been kidnapped and the kidnappers seem to know about the student, thereby convincing the parents who then try to find the money to pay the ransom.

Their attempts to contact their son or daughter fail.

What has happened is that the gangs started by targeting overseas students (especially Chinese students) where the parents will have trouble travelling to the University.

They learned what they could about their targets initially then contacted the targets – claiming to be the authorities, telling them their life is in danger and they could be deported or imprisoned.

They learn more about the target so as to be able to convince the parents and they warn the target not to contact anyone or talk with anyone and to ignore phone calls, emails etc. as these could be false.

This is a nasty business as the parents will be terrified and pay a ransom and the target will be terrified to talk to anyone and in fear of prosecution.

The official advice is that anyone who receives such threatening calls they should contact the authorities immediately and certainly not just pay a ransom.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-wasters do let me know, by email.

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Sea Salt Stupidity

When you go in the supermarket nowadays you’re likely to see plenty of different brands of table salt and sea salt and various ‘fancy’ salts.

We all know that salt is a food preservative and flavour enhancer so almost everything you eat will have some salt in naturally or that’s been added.

This latest scammer is trying to stir up worries over salt – to further her aim of making money at your expense of course.

Some basic facts

  1. Table salt is the chemical sodium chloride and is perfectly natural and essential in minute quantities for a healthy life
  2. Table salt can be dug out of the ground in some places in salt bearing rocks, ground down, purified and you have salt to sell.
  3. Sea salt is the salts that are in sea water. This is usually made by collecting sea water in large pans and letting the sun dry them out to leave the salt residue.
  4. Sea salt is almost entirely sodium chloride (I.e. the same as table salt) but with some added other salts such as potassium chloride. This is generally considered to be healthier than pure table salt as the potassium in particular is beneficial for health in small doses.

The scammers message starts with supposed facts to frighten people, including

  • Morton’s Salt makes salt for chemical processes such as producing plastics, but 6% of their production becomes table salt
  • Most sea salts are as bad as table salt as the refining processes strips way “missing things”
  • “The belief that a low salt diet can prevent heart disease – is false”

The scammer is trying to get you to watch a video clip.

That’s all this is about – frightening people into watching a pointless video clip for which she gets paid.

Don’t worry about types of salt etc. just make sure you stick to the government recommended limit on salt intake.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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Aussie Rules

In Australia, the problems of scam email, text messages, calls and more are pretty much the same as in the UK and USA.

But the Australian government is fighting back. Their efforts to reduce scam calls have worked well. “In the first 16 months after the Reducing Scam Calls code was put in place, telcos reported blocking over 549 million scam calls to Australian phone numbers, and there has been a dramatic drop in scam call complaints.

Now it’s time to go after the scam text messages.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) registered new rules to require telecom companies to identify, trace and block SMS scams.

The ACMA worked closely with the Communications Alliance to develop the Reducing Scam Calls and Scam Short Messages industry code in response to evidence that SMS scams are increasing in prevalence and impact.

“These scam messages are deeply frustrating to Australians because they are received on devices that are an essential part of our social and economic lives. Almost every Australian adult and business is affected. We shouldn’t have to screen messages and adopt workaround behaviours to be able to feel safe and stay connected”

The harder we make it for scammers, the less Australians are likely to be targeted.”

“We expect to see SMS scams reduce as industry step up to do more to protect their customers,” she said.

Under the rules, telcos must also publish information to assist their customers to proactively manage and report SMS scams, share information about scam messages with other telcos and report identified scams to authorities.

Combating SMS and identity theft phone scams is an ACMA compliance priority, and telcos will face penalties of up to $250,000 for breaching ACMA directions to comply with the new code.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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