A new scam...

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/20...ty-scam-sounds

I got called 5 times in one day. DO NOT PUSH #1 . I did not but a lot of people do.

The other scam is someone calling about your electric rates or phone rates and they ask you very innocent sounding questions but at sometime in the call they ask for your social security number so they can verify your identity to give you the best rates, which is a tricky way to get your SS number. NEVER GIVE YOUR SS # TO ANYONE ON THE PHONE!!!

The number of SCAM phone calls has increased lately after a short lull.

when answering a call wait 5 seconds before saying hello - this fools the robot calling system into "thinking" it just called an answering machine/voicemail.
The robot call is automatically terminated.
Don't ask me how I know this its a story that way too long....

Sometimes this works sometimes not.

Got a call recently from some "police benevolence society" The caller said my first name and then paused and started into a canned spiel. Pretty tricky. I hung up. Another Spam phone call I got was from a company calling from somewhere in Asia wanting me to switch my electric supplier. Since our town has a local electrical utility I could not switch if I wanted to. The "recorded lady" was very nice but when I tried to hang up the recorded voice switched and started to swear. First time for this. I guess they are getting desperate and pissed.

Ah the joys of living in the 21st century.

I let most calls go to voicemail. If I don’t recognize the number, I don’t pick up.

I went strictly mobile back at the beginning of 2004 when I sold my house. I liked the fact that (for years), phone spammers left mobiles alone. But, of course, that has well ended.

It's frequent these days for me to get at least three junk calls a day (they come in threes per the latest algos). The numbers are almost always spoofed. For a year or two, because most of them used 'local spoofing' (your own area code and prefix followed by a bogus number), I could just block anyone not in my contacts 'from' my local prefix. But then they got wise and just started using random long distance numbers (typically spoofed, so calling back produces a wrong or dead number).

So I had to start blocking EVERYTHING not already in my contacts list. The blocked calls automatically are routed to voicemail as soon as they come in. (There's usually no message, of course.But every once in a while, I get something in a foreign language, typically Chinese or an east Asian language.)

(Using the contact list as a 'white list' does mean I have to be proactive about adding contacts -- although there's also a dedicated white list; I also have to turn off the blocking temporarily when I request a phone queue call-back, since most such callback engines use a DIFFERENT number than the number you initially called.)

It took a little looking to find the blocking tools I wanted but I now use Call Blocker (by Vlad Lee, from the Google Play Android Apps store) on my Android. I use the ad-supported free version but there's an in-app 99 cent pro app purchase to get rid of ads if one wants.

One issue, the developer is based in Russia, which, sadly, is going to make people nervous. (I have it set to only access contacts and phone, which, of course, is not nothing; I have access to storage turned off.)

Me too.

When I get really bugged about it, I go stand out front and wait for an "Eastern European" in a black Beemer with no plates to blow through the stop sign at the end of my block and then rip past my house doing 80. I never have to wait long. Then I throw my phone at the dumb bastard as hard as I can. But I always miss.

Happily, Long Beach is too déclassé for the oligarch-wannabes.

Thankfully the FCC is cracking down on the spam or it may be that AT&T is filtering the spam. During the past month or so, the number of spam calls that I get has been greatly reduced.

5 calls yesterday from Google Ad Words, 2 from Medicare plans, 2 from a "silence at the other end" caller and 2 from some company wanting me to power wash my drive way for a 25% discount and 1 from a potential client. 11 to is not a good ratio IMHO. FWIW

Land line?

I know these scams sound so f*cking stupid but there are many people falling for it, especially older people. And that really makes me so angry.

I got a call from some dumb bitch trying to scam me. I was stupid enough to pick it up. She said she works for a stock broker bla bla bla. I already knew that this is a scam. I asked her how did she got my phonenumber, she couldn't answer while she kept asking me if I want to earn easy money (yeah my a$$). I asked her if it's easy money why are you here scamming people? She kept insisting that she isn't a scammer. So you have a magic formula to make cash and you're selling it while you're working in a call center for a slave wage. I told her I hope you get hit by a truck, bye bye. Those idiots still try to call me, I just don't pick up. <SNIP - let's leave the racial stereotypes out of it>

With regard to 'Google' calls:

https://support.google.com/google-ad...?msgid=1473653

I'm using cell phone service only. If you're using a land line, I highly recommend you dump it.

Yes on my landline.

I am NOT a big cell phone user and still have my 10 year old flip phone for my cell phone. I am not interested in all the new technology that is super expensive. $1000 for a phone - forget it. FWIW

LMFAO!

Come into the 21st century. It’s not so bad here.

Anyway, you can get an inexpensive cell phone for $100 and get a $30 a month plan. No contract either.

Talk and text are practically free these days, with nationwide coverage. The only thing that makes cell phone plans expensive is the data package. You can just pay by the gigabyte if you aren’t interested in using data that much.

I've found his phones:





<SNIP - again, some sensitivity please!>

I pay 10 euro per month for unlimited texting and unlimited calls, 5GB bandwidth but I never use my phone that much only to stay in touch with a couple friends trough whatsapp, heck I use it more as an alarm clock than a phone. But you're right, there are many applications which allow you to make free phone calls via wifi like Viber, Whatsapp, Telegram etc. This isn't the 90's anymore.

Yeah, I remember getting $150+ a month cell phone bills when I was locked into contracts back in the early 2000s. I got charged for every phone call, every text, and more charges for “out of network” calls and texts. **** sucked.

Once they came out with the prepay phones, I ditched the contract phones and haven’t looked back.

AT&T just sent me a link to download an app that tracks the spam calls that AT&T is auto blocking for you. Glad to see the big networks are finally doing something about spam calls. I'm sure they are being directed to do so by the FCC.

Don't be cheap!

You can finance your smart cell phone via the network provider. They just add an affordable monthly installment to your bill.

Tom...

I'm typing this post on my factory refurbished iPhone 5 which I got 6 months ago for $85 on eBay. The "new technology" isn't all that new or all that expensive, in fact a lot of it's free. And it's mostly designed to even be comprehensible and usable by old farts like us.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if you're "grandfathered in" (apt term) to a cell plan that has you paying more now than you might be paying for a plan with unlimited call/text/data time.

You CAN (and people do) pay huge amounts for a phone -- but my old mobile -- a barely second gen Android smart phone from 2011/12 -- started acting fishy last T-day weekend and, without even realizing it was cyber-Monday, I found a new, mid-tier unlocked Moto offered for (outright) sale from my mobile provider (Ting, cheap for voice and text; data less-so) for about $90. (You might find that model over the counter for $130 or so -- but better to look for a newer release at discount; look for holiday deals between now and NY.)

My new phone's got all the junk that was on the top end phones a few years back, fingerprint scanner (handy if you keep your phone 'screen-locked'), high capacity battery, 13Mpx and 5Mpx cams, 32 GB of built-in memory -- with the ability to use cheap, add-in microSD memory -- and, I gotta say, the current Android runs a LOT better on it than it does on my cheapo tablet. (And, of course, the ability to run various spam-call-blocking apps.)

It's not even half as cool as the Nokias I used to buy in bulk for my dad. He had Alzheimer's and they'd wind up in the washing machine, kicked under the fridge, God knows where else.

We may laugh about these old phones but they was built like a tank. You recharge them once in 3-4 days, when you drop them their screens won't break unlike all these phones we got nowadays.

I had one of those Nokias come out of the washer dripping water and with a giant hair under the screen, but it still worked. I paid $14 each for them in batches of five.

I loved a couple of my old flip phones. Actually, though, I have to say that my just-retired 2011/12 LG Android SEEMED to be all but indestructible.

I somehow let it go out of my hand carrying a bunch of stuff up my stairs and it fell at least 8 feet to a hard concrete walk. By then, it had been through a few nasty drops and I had a hearty half-hope it wasn't broken.

Sure enough, the back flew off (like the crumpling front end of a safety-first Mercedes) and the removable battery went sailing -- along with the tiny SIM card (well, it shook itself half out of the hinged sleeve thing)... I think my microSD card popped half out, too.

But I put it all back together and it worked FINE! (There was a kind of nasty stress scuff on one corner of the plastic case.) But the exposed (Gorilla Glass, I think) screen was fine.

Newest phone scam out here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...cid=spartanntp

I don't know who these scammers are targeting but I keep getting this phone call where the recorded voice says that I can get cash back from all my credit cards if I simply give them my credit card numbers and my pin numbers and they will "take care of the rest". Boy, I'm sure they will. I also get recorded messages from the FBI saying that they are going to come to my home and arrest me for unpaid taxes. WTF.

The scamming is always the worst from the middle of the month to the end of the month. I guess the spammers have a quota and need to meet that quota for them to "stay in business" What a MESS! I thought that the FCC was going to crack down on spammers. It, to the best of my knowledge, has not happened yet or the spammers know the end is in sight and are trying to spam everyone before it really happens. FWIW

It’s out of the FCC’s ability to manage at this point. The crooks are far too numerous and the FCC is a government entity with limited funding. They will need military funding to really make a dent in the problem. Even then, the crooks are specialists at stealing money and will always find a new way to get what they want.

A new wrinkle on the old scam... this one shows a bit of extra cleverness...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alert-p...-text-message/

6 calls yesterday from "Apple support" saying that my computer was polluting the internet or that they had noticed some suspicious activity on my ICLOUD account and wanted to get into my computer to "fix the problem". The women who initiates the call sounds very "Americanish" with their speech, which is a recorded announcement, but when the "technician" gets on the line with a name like "Joe" or "Scott" they have a very South East Asian accent. That is when I usually hang up. The last call from them was at 9 pm EDT. A bit late to be calling IMHO. I also got three "no one at the other end calls". FWIW