Scams you've encountered

[jklinders]

I've never fallen for it, but I've run into the Microsoft phone scam.

For those who don't know, the scam works like this. You receive a call, and the caller says that they're some sort of representative from Microsoft, but are in fact just from some call center in India (easy to tell from the accent). The caller claims that your PC (doesn't matter what you actually have, they'll just say your Windows PC) is infected with multiple viruses, and that they need your permission to help clean it up. By using tactics such as making standard system errors seem like virus reports, they convince the person to go through some program that allows the person on the other end to take control of the computer, at which point they'll access whatever files are on their and just end the call there. It's been around for a while, and I've gotten at least three instances of this scam being attempted. You would think that at this point people would wise up, although apparently many still fall for it.

Depending on my mood I like to troll these goons sometimes. Sometimes I pretend to play along until they let slip that they have no clue what OS I'm operating. Once I asked them "which computer?" To which he replied, "your windows operating computer." I said, "sure but which one? I have more than one." "How many do you have?" "Well shouldn't you know that?" *click*

 

[jklinders]

Am I the only one around here that realized the scam bot in this thread wasn't actually a bot? (S)he should be unsuspended.

(S)he broke unwritten rule number 11 (I think), the "Triggr rule" (I came up with it back on the Unwritten Rules thread, I get to name it), which states that if you're going to be sarcastic you have to make some kind of indication aside from the sarcasm itself. This is the internet so people can't tell just by reading it.

If (s)he wants, I'm sure (s)he can appeal the suspension by PMing a mod and explaining the situation.
If not, the suspension will eventually go away, and (s)he will just be left with a warning.

It also posted in a thread of mine, and it's just a plain spambot. The "Nice Try" link was a joke on the part of the mods.

Indeed, every post made on that (new) account was the same spam. Suspension is too lenient. What it needs is a ban.

captcha : slender man is slender

Yay captcha is giving me memes in memes because I like memes. yo dog.

 

[Doclector]

Oh yeah. Had a guy call my house phone and ask me for $10000 to get my daughter back.

Problem: I was 15 at the time, and sure as hell didn't have a daughter. AND scams like that had already hit the news, and the cops were telling people to watch out for it.

Heh, I've had plenty of emails telling me that the account I have at a bank I don't use is under threat.

Youtube scams are usually pretty obvious. "Hey, I think your channel has real potential, it could get really famous! Follow this link to increase your subscribers!" For one thing, my channel isn't very good, and for another, if there was a legit website with only the honest intention of allowing people to advertise their youtube channels, I'd probably know about it, and I really don't see a scenario in which I get away with using some kind of program that gives me artificial subs, even if I was to assume it wasn't a goddamn virus.

I was also once approached in the street by someone with terrible english trying to get me to pay for his petrol because his bank account wasn't working and that he'd send the money to my account. From his account, I'm guessing? The broken account? GG, bro.

Y'know, I'm not actually sure of the scam here, but once I was randomly contacted on youtube of all places by someone trying to convert me to Islam. I'll give him credit, he was a hell of a lot more polite than the typical christian street preacher technique of "YOU! YOU'RE A TERRIBLE PERSON AND YOU'RE GOING TO HELL, AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!"

 

[Jacob Fenton]

I've never fallen for it, but I've run into the Microsoft phone scam.

For those who don't know, the scam works like this. You receive a call, and the caller says that they're some sort of representative from Microsoft, but are in fact just from some call centre in India (easy to tell from the accent). The caller claims that your PC (doesn't matter what you actually have, they'll just say your Windows PC) is infected with multiple viruses, and that they need your permission to help clean it up. By using tactics such as making standard system errors seem like virus reports, they convince the person to go through some program that allows the person on the other end to take control of the computer, at which point they'll access whatever files are on their and just end the call there. It's been around for a while, and I've gotten at least three instances of this scam being attempted. You would think that at this point people would wise up, although apparently many still fall for it.

I had that exact same thing. Except having had a few actual errors, I ALMOST fell for it, until I rather wisely googled the website he asked me to go to instead of just going to it, then making it clear that I wasn't going to let him access my files but if he explained what the issues were that Id appreciate it and could fix them myself knowing enough about my computer/having much more experienced friends who could help me. He started shouting down the phone at me for not paying attention to him and refusing to give him access until he eventually hung up in frustration because I was questioning everything he said (I was bored, and it started to amuse me once I'd caught on but he didn't know I hadn't fallen for it).

Highlight of the conversation:

Scammer "Sir, you're computer is broken and doesn't load up properly"

Me "I just turned it on and it worked fine, just like the last 6 or seven times I have in the last day or so..."

Scammer "SIR! YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO ME! YOUR COMPUTER IS BROKEN!!!

 

[Lieju]

I recently received an automated cold call from somebody with a nigerian-esque accent saying that if I donated money to him, he would pray for me. Being both logical and an atheist, I hung up, but I'm sure there are plenty of old/religious people who may have taken the bait.

Is that a scam, though? If they really do pray for you, then it's paying for a service. Sure, a service that does nothing, but it's not like he promised for a god to help you if you donated.

Which are scams.
My uncle is religious, and he has been taken advantage of by religious organisations that promised to heal his health problems if he had faith. (and of course, the way to show your faith is by giving them money.)

On a more cheerful note, my aunt loves to troll her relatives with scam-calls. (Of course, no-one loses money over it)
She once sent a pair of knitted old socks to my other aunt with a letter about how their family had been chosen for study for the new super-socks, and asked them to try the socks out and keep a diary about the effects. The target aunt and her mother-in-law fell for it for about a week.

One other time this aunt called my grandmother, pretending to be a police officer (she can disguise her voice), and first started asking if my grandma had taken her dog on a walk to the nearby park. My grandmother got scared, of course, since she was afraid the police was calling because she hadn't collected the dog's poo, and my aunt let her believe it for a while, before starting to go on about how there had been a bear in the park and the police was calling everyone to warn them about the bear...

My aunt could make a living by scamming people. Then again, she owns a company that sells stationary and that kind of stuff, so maybe she already does...

 

[Doclector]

I've never fallen for it, but I've run into the Microsoft phone scam.

For those who don't know, the scam works like this. You receive a call, and the caller says that they're some sort of representative from Microsoft, but are in fact just from some call center in India (easy to tell from the accent). The caller claims that your PC (doesn't matter what you actually have, they'll just say your Windows PC) is infected with multiple viruses, and that they need your permission to help clean it up. By using tactics such as making standard system errors seem like virus reports, they convince the person to go through some program that allows the person on the other end to take control of the computer, at which point they'll access whatever files are on their and just end the call there. It's been around for a while, and I've gotten at least three instances of this scam being attempted. You would think that at this point people would wise up, although apparently many still fall for it.

My grandfather fell for that one. My grandmother will never let him hear the end of it, luckily she found out fast enough to call the bank company and stop too much money going out.

 

[UniversalRonin]

I had 'Microsoft support' call me the other day because of problems they had found on my computer. I told them I was a computer science graduate and that what they were doing was illegal. They hung up pretty quick.

 

[lechat]

99% of the people in a pickup truck pulling into my driveway and trying to sell some meat/sandwiches saying that it's on sale because it's the last of the batch and they can't just let it go to waste. Same story EVERY SINGLE TIME.

We have a similar thing in the UK called the "white van" scam but with speakers. The speakers they are selling at massive discount are full of sawdust, just empty shells. Always some spares left over from a delivery.

it's actually kinda creepy how many countries have the same scam and in australia we also call it the white van scam since the scammers are always for some reason in a white van

had the same scam attempted on me and 2 work colleges in a truck on the way to a job once, the conversation went roughly:
"hey wanna buy a cheap stereo. last one left from the factory 100% legit"
"go fuck yourself"

the scam itself sometimes isn't technically a scam. what they offer you is a ridiculously low priced high tech item and what you end up getting is something which is cheaper but usually worth about what you paid.

 

[Superbeast]

1) When I was on vacation in Rome, a guy stopped by in a car and asked for directions to Piazza del Popolo. Despite an obvious question of "why are you asking a tourist", I humored him and gave him the directions. He then launched into a story about how he's a sales rep for Hugo Boss or something, showed me a bunch of (obviously fake) windstoppers he had on the pilot seat, he'll happily give one to me, but you know, he's been driving in circles for hours, he's out of gas and he doesn't have any change, so if he could get some money for that... I told him I didn't have any, his facial expression immediately changed from "friendly" to "fuck you" in that weird way only Italians can pull off and he drove off.

Oh my god, someone tried that on me and my friend when we were on a research trip to Rome too! Though it was some old guy claiming to be a Versace designer, in the city for a fashion show but had got lost. He had a catalogue of "the latest designs" (which were clearly cut out of magazines and stuck into a scrap-book), and offered me a shirt/jacket and my friend a bag (which he had piles of on the back seat) if we could give him directions (and "for being friendly"). He spent a good 10 minutes trying to sweet-talk us. Then he claimed to be out of fuel, did not have any cash, and that the petrol station (which we could see a few hundred meters behind him) wouldn't accept Visa credit-cards. We could only have his designer gear if we'd give him 20-50 Euros...each (I think, might have been 200 Euros). Funnily enough, we told him to scram.

The facial expression change is something delightful to behold, and you are quite right, I've never seen anyone but an Italian pull it off. Still, he put a lot of effort into his scam, and I am certain that it must work on some tourists.

When I was in Rome on holiday in 2010, myself and my parents were walking to the Colosseum when a man driving a 2-door hired Fiat pulled up next to us, he said that he was none other than Giorgio Armani and he wanted to sell us a "next-season" jacket for the tiny price of 1500? because he wanted to buy fuel. He even pulled out a few covers of a magazine with pictures of him on the front posing as Giorgio Armani. Now, even if it was him, why was he in a 2-door Fiat hire care, and why was he even DRIVING in the first place?

Haha, so that is 3 of us in the same thread that have experienced similar scams! I was wondering why the old guy was in a kinda crummy Fiat/other small car, did seem a little odd for such a high-profile designer...thinking about it, my scammer may have been claiming to be Armani, rather than Versace


To both the above quoted posters:

Out of interest, whereabouts in Rome were you when you were approached by these car-based scammers?

 

[spartan231490]

snip

...that's not what this thread is about, and I'm pretty sure you know that. Please keep the gun control rants to the threads that are actually about gun control.

It's too important. I will spread the word wherever I can, if even 1 person hears the truth who hasn't before I will consider it a job well done. No matter how much people get angry at me for it.


Biggest Scam # 2, HR 347. The back-room politics bill no one ever heard about that conditionalizes the first amendment. That's right folks, peaceful protests and free speech are no longer allowed at any event being protected by the secret service. Participating in such a protest is a felony now. I'm not saying the US is about to become a fascist state. I'm just saying we should probably put on our tin-foil hats.

 

[Strazdas]

I've run into the common "windows PC" scam a dozen times. They've called my cell phone, the landline phone our whole family shares, my mom's cell phone, and my dad's cell phone. I had a problem when said brother was staying here (he believed it, how funny is that? Man runs confidence schemes to fuel his drug habit and still fell for a indian man going "your computer has virus, it is windows system32 virus!") when he gave them access to my dad's computer. Usually I give them the run-around saying I cannot connect to their site, I don't know what password to use since my accounts always seem to end up getting stolen, etc. Once I said "but which computer, we have 4!" the woman on the other end actually said..."maybe...all are infect?" The "bapa booey bapa booey" line works fantastically too, especially if you do it in a drunken "bro" impression.

I see a lot of this posted around and we dont really have such scam here. i guess the average person isnt as computer-owning as it should be.
Thing is, our ISP would leginatelly call you for viruses. if your computer is zombified, they woudl call and tell you about it. but its not about getting information, the chat would go like this:
"Hello is this ?"
"yes"
"You are in contract for internet . Your computer is spreading viruses. fix it in 30 days or we will cancel your internet contract"
and then depending on mood they would try to help you or not. but its not a scam, they genuinely try to stop viruses.

It's too important. I will spread the word wherever I can, if even 1 person hears the truth who hasn't before I will consider it a job well done. No matter how much people get angry at me for it.

Biggest Scam # 2, HR 347. The back-room politics bill no one ever heard about that conditionalizes the first amendment. That's right folks, peaceful protests and free speech are no longer allowed at any event being protected by the secret service. Participating in such a protest is a felony now. I'm not saying the US is about to become a fascist state. I'm just saying we should probably put on our tin-foil hats.

every lunatic thinks his information is important. once again, this is not a thread about it.

 

[MrCollins]

I haven't been a victim of it. But I got home one day to find my mum on the phone with some guy from some tech company who had called to tell her that they had detected a fault in her computer, and that she needed to pay for some software to fix it. My mum's computer did have an issue at the time, and her being computer illiterate bought their software and started downloading it.
Thankfully, I arrived before it was fully installed and could copy her hard drive for any personal information but they still got 70 euros out of us.

 

[WindKnight]

My mother received a prize notification letter in the post, saying she had definitely won at least one of the following prizes - a car, a big huge cash sum, a tv, a mobile phone, and another pile of big awesome stuff. she just had to reply, and one of these prizes was definitely hers.

Reading the prize breakdown closely revealled that all the big awesome prizes were 1 only. the big number of prizes were the mobile phones, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, so overwhelmingly, people were going to be winning these mobile phones.

Said phones came with mandatory 24 month contracts of £30 a month, so your 'free prize' would be costing you just over £700

 

[Queen Michael]

snip

...that's not what this thread is about, and I'm pretty sure you know that. Please keep the gun control rants to the threads that are actually about gun control.

It's too important. I will spread the word wherever I can, if even 1 person hears the truth who hasn't before I will consider it a job well done. No matter how much people get angry at me for it.


Biggest Scam # 2, HR 347. The back-room politics bill no one ever heard about that conditionalizes the first amendment. That's right folks, peaceful protests and free speech are no longer allowed at any event being protected by the secret service. Participating in such a protest is a felony now. I'm not saying the US is about to become a fascist state. I'm just saying we should probably put on our tin-foil hats.

Fact remains, you should keep it to the appropriate threads or you'll get the moderators.

 

[spartan231490]

snip

...that's not what this thread is about, and I'm pretty sure you know that. Please keep the gun control rants to the threads that are actually about gun control.

It's too important. I will spread the word wherever I can, if even 1 person hears the truth who hasn't before I will consider it a job well done. No matter how much people get angry at me for it.


Biggest Scam # 2, HR 347. The back-room politics bill no one ever heard about that conditionalizes the first amendment. That's right folks, peaceful protests and free speech are no longer allowed at any event being protected by the secret service. Participating in such a protest is a felony now. I'm not saying the US is about to become a fascist state. I'm just saying we should probably put on our tin-foil hats.

Fact remains, you should keep it to the appropriate threads or you'll get the moderators.

I don't see how it was inappropriate. The thread asked about scams, I posted scams.

 

[triggrhappy94]

That's not a scam, that's called working for commission.

It's not that they rip you off. It's that, unless you know a lot of rich people or are in an area without a lot competition, you end up getting payed far less then minimum wage for a job that works you to death.

 

[triggrhappy94]

Snip.

I wasn't going to say anything. But please try to keep the gun stuff to either thread explicitly about guns or (more preferably) the RnP section.

 

[The Hero Killer]

I encountered Vector myself. They sent this brochure with pictures of young people in suits working in a business environment, but when I got to the building it was a rundown rented out space that sold knives. I immediately turned them down.

 

[Frezzato]

Spoiler: Pigeon Drop

There are a couple of scams that run amongst the homeless/barely employed where I'm from. One is called the 'Pigeon Drop' where some guy claims to have found a bag of money and wants to "go find the legitimate owner" , but he wants to leave the money with you. Somehow, they're supposed to be able to convince you that in order to leave the cash with you, you have to give them collateral while they go off looking for blah blah blah. What usually happens is the victim loses maybe $50 and are left with a bag of miscellaneous paper, like a phone book, instead of actual cash. I can't believe that crap actually works, but it does.

Spoiler: Vacuum Cleaner Sales Girl

There was another bizarre scam (I think it was a scam?) involving vacuum cleaners. There's this excellent brand of vacuum, I think it was Kirby, and the "salespeople" go door to door, showing people how good the vacuum is. Unfortunately it's usually young kids who claim they're trying to sell units in order to "win a trip to _______". And to get into your house this one girl offered me a free 2-liter of Pepsi. Wait, it gets weirder...

So the girl starts vacuuming areas of my house, the few carpets I had, and removes the filter after each pass and sure enough, it caught a lot of fine dust that normal vacuums don't catch. I kept asking her how much but she kept saying, "Wait, wait, there's more, let me show you." After maybe 30 minutes there are filters with dust sitting on them all around the house and she finally tells me how much: $900. I reacted, saying that was way more than I would pay for a vacuum, no matter how good it was. She immediately packs up and leaves, leaving all of these dust covered filters throughout my house.

The end result is that some poor girl vacuumed my house and left me with a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi, which I promptly emptied into the sink and recycled. Was it a scam or was it a hard-sell tactic? Either way, I don't think she did it right. A strange, beat up van came driving by and she jumped into the back.

Spoiler: AT&T Fiber Optic UVerse

This last one isn't a scam, but it's kind of funny. So over a year ago AT&T enacted a maximum download capacity of 150GB per month for regular DSL customers. People who have their super fast UVerse service have a cap of 200GB. I noticed that somebody on my block recently installed UVerse because AT&T people in blue or orange shirts were going house to house trying to sell the service--and hopefully recover some of the cost. A few weeks later someone from AT&T called me asking if I knew about UVerse. I told him I didn't want it because of the 200GB download cap, and in return he basically accused me of downloading illegally. But here's the deal:

I say to the guy, If I'm getting streaming HDTV along with VOIP AND internet, while I have in my house a PS3, 360, Wii, 2 tower PCs and 2 laptops, I could EASILY surpass the 200GB monthly limit. I only have Netflix and Amazon right now, and I always default to the lowest definition picture. There was a pause, and I thought he was going to counterattack with a sales pitch. More seconds go by and all of a sudden he screams, "YOU KNOW WHAT? YOU'RE RIGHT!!!" He launches into a tirade about AT&T and how the other departments were sabotaging his job, so I tried to calm him down. "NO! WE'RE ENTITLED TO OUR OPINIONS!" he continued. He finally thanked me and hung up. I feel bad. I think I got him fired.

 

[Petromir]

For me the biggest scam that i fell victim for was the "Get Xbox Live GOLD for a month for 2$ only !" When i saw this i was like "OH gee ! What a deal, it's probably to give a chance to those who don't have gold, a chance to play for a while for cheap !" WRONG !!!! Right when the konth ends, there's some kind of shit where they automatically renew your xbox live gold memebership. Which means that every month or 2 they take money from your credit card WITHOUT TELLING YOU ! So what i have to do was call "Microsoft Canada HQ" for it do be disabled. It's probably in the contract that you "agree" to when you pay your 2 dollars for the gold membership...but who seriously reads those contracts ?

Wait what? You signed up for a subscription service and feel its a scam when they take the sub out?

There are some dodgy subscription scams out there, but thats so far from one it never sent a christmas card let alone bothered to remove the scammy ones from its list......