New Phish Using Amazon as Bait
 

I received a phone call today (we let it go to voice mail as we did not recognize the caller ID). The voicemail referred to a $99.00 purchase from Amazon and "advised" me that the charge would be posted to my account unless I wished to take issue with it, in which case I should call [some number with a Denver area code].

I do from time to time buy stuff via Amazon, when no other alternative presents itself, and I did recently order two mystery novels (total less than $30.00 and Amazon emailed me to expect them Friday). I checked my Amazon account and, natch, there was no $99.00 charge pending.

I refused the bait and deleted the message, but, I must say, this is a new phish, at least in my experience.

As aside, I must say, I actually enjoy getting legitimate wrong numbers these days. It's a pleasure to pick up the phone and find a real live honest human being on the other end of the line.

Received a call yesterday about my "student loans."
I had a good laugh and deleted the voice mail.
:D

Seems like all I get is "We've been trying to contact you about your vehicle's extended warranty". They are beyond annoying some weeks.

It seems that the people pestering us with calls we don't want in the past, have given up on us. We hardly ever get a land line call these days.

One thing that happens to me increasingly is that my phone rings, I pick up the receiver and give my number, and the caller hangs up immediately. Do these people have a list of responses that have been proved not worth bothering with?

I get them from all sorts of scams, and my wife's phone, for some reason, gets many more of them. I think the spam filtering on my phone works. We both get the disconnects, I suspect mostly because the spammer/scammer has dozens of calls in progress at once via the automated computer script, and takes the first one that answers, disconnecting the others. But I could be wrong, I'm not an expert on telescamming. I get really tired of calls wanting to lower my credit card interest.

The ones that make me laugh are those that use an obviously synthetic voice to tell me that there is a legal action against me using my social security number, or otherwise claiming to be from the IRS or SSA. Those agencies never, ever, use the telephone to contact you unless prior arrangements have been made. They only use the US Postal Service. I also get mail that looks like it's coming from the government, but on closer reading it's just advertising. Real mail from government agencies is easy to spot.

By the GODS yes, I get those 2-3 times a DAY...

I get those all the time.

I better check whether the warranty has run out on my 2003 vehicle . . . .

We get others too, but the Amazon one was new.

There we are, I got one of them couple of days ago. The others mentioned here get them from time to time to but that was the first time for the SIN scam.

What I've been doing recently, if we think it might be a real call, is to answer and put the phone on speaker. After a couple of seconds, a real live human being will say something like, "Uh, er, hello?" A computer will click off in 21 seconds.

Of course, the real live human being may be a crook and a con ("I'm from Microsoft/the IRS/[some bank]"), but may not be. I've gotten many calls from caller ID "Wireless Caller" that have turned out to be persons I know or have legitimate business with.

This hasn't happened in a few months, but on a regular basis I was getting calls where the caller would announce, in English, they were from the Bank of America or DHL or ...fill in the blank, then play a message recorded in Chinese.
Over time I think the best defense is just don't answer if you don't recognize the number.
Of course, there was the time they were using my own phone number. Blocking numbers seems to be a waste of time as their computer equipment can spoof any number.

Quite true. I've received calls where the Caller ID was spoofed to show my own area code and exchange. I've given up on blocking numbers on my cell.

I must say, though, I've not gotten any spam calls that devolve to recordings in foreign languages, at least, none that I've answered:). That does seem especially inept.

I normally screen unknown calls. I don't know if every carrier offers this, but with my Pixel on AT&T, I get a button to screen the call. If I select that, a recording tells the caller that the caller is being screened, and go ahead and say their name and why they're calling. Spammers hang up immediately. If it's a call I need to take, I just tap the answer button and take it. If I see "I am interested in buying your house", I tap the spam button. The spam filters are imperfect, and sometimes mark a call as a suspected spammer/telemarketer when it's from a legitimate caller, I think based on the area code. Anyone calling from an 866 number seems to get marked. Sometimes I don't even get a ring, it just goes straight to voicemail. If it's important, they can leave a message. All this is an unintended consequence of free long-distance calling, just like spam emails.

I've had the same cell phone number for over eight years, yet I get robo-text messages, sometimes as many as three a day, addressed to a, Miaoling.
One day last October I received, no joke, 26 robo-texts. That is not an exaggeration and they are still on the phone in the "spam & blocked" file. In recent months it has slowed down and some days I don't get any text messges and some days they call at 03:00 or 04:00 in the morning or 20:00 or 21:00 at night. Apparently there is no way to stop it, so I often turn the phone off.