Ever get a phone call asking for personal information or for access to your computer via some remote access software? What about a phone call telling you you owed taxes?

Not too long ago, I alerted an elderly man at my bank that the person he was on the phone with was probably trying to scam him out of $2000. Long story short, I took the old man's outdated cell phone and the man on the line claimed to be the elderly man's brother. The elderly man told me he was speaking to social security. Yup! Scam call! Told the elderly man to never believe such calls, they're nonsense.

A little further back, my father got a phone message telling him his SS # was tied to some criminal activity in Texas and he would need to phone them up. Another scam looking for personal info or gift card numbers, of course. I too was targeted with phone calls offering to lower my credit card payments (I don't have any credit cards) or calls wanting to add benefits to my medicare/medicaid.

As a regular watcher of YouTube channels like Jim Browning, below, I was better informed to recognize these tactics and thankfully, never fell for any of them and even helped an elderly man at my bank!

Ever get a call like this? I'd like to hear you out and if not, hopefully now you'll know to not be so trusting of someone phoning you out of the blue. Give your friends and family members a heads up too while you're at it.

Also, be careful when looking up phone numbers on the internet. Scammers have been known to poison these things too and fool you into thinking they're Samsung or Microsoft.

I leave you with some videos by YouTuber Jim Browning who's a scam-baiting pro. Definitely worth a watch. I also encourage you to check out his channel. Really informative stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo5JdX-CzoY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgleVHL9X5E

All the time. I've gotten calls saying I owe the IRS back taxes, and calls saying that I owe something for car insurance that I don't have. People suck.

Yep. I've even gotten calls saying I'm about to be arrested for credit card fraud or some such and have to call back right now, police are on their way lol.

We never answer the phone anymore, if you want to talk, talk to the answering machine first and we'll pick up. I'm starting to consider cancelling the home phone. I only still use it to call my family in Europe.

MS finally improved their phishing scam filters as I was reporting multiple scam mails a day at some point. Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Paypal, it never ends. My accounts got locked about every other day according to these scammers.

The "I'm from Microsoft and we detected a virus on your computer" shtick is pretty common in Europe.
Usually callers from Pakistan/India, and they are not bothered if the person they call doesn't even have a computer like my father...

Oh, yeah, those were a thing! But the real plague is not the scams, it's the telemarketers.

My sister in law got one where she played along with the guy. Then somewhere along the way, he figured out she was messing with him and started cursing at her--BUT she started talking sexy to him and pretended to have phone sex and the guy loved it. Then he started calling trying to meet her. It was insane!

I have the audio somewhere. She has a "call recorder app"and she sent it to my wife via Facebook and my wife sent it to me. It was the craziest most hilarious thing ever and she's so good at fucking with these scammers that if she wanted to, I'm sure she could go viral.

Oh man, I was drinking water while reading this and I started choking up from the laughter, haha.


I got a call once saying I had won some money and "all" I needed to do was to send them my bank account info so they could wire the money. Sadly it was pre-recorded so I didn't get to tell them to fuck off, lol.

"Well sir, for the purposes of this call, we're going to pretend you have a computer. Please log in to your computer."

lol

My wife got one a while back saying she had won the publishers clearing House sweepstakes. The guy wanted her to go get a gift card or something convoluted. When she didn't sound excited, the guy asked her what was wrong. She said she had won like five times already. Suddenly the guy got pissed and said "Suck my deek and eat my sheet, beech!" And then hung up.

This was back in like 2015. After that, she tries to mess with them, doing fake voices and crazy scenarios but she's nowhere near as good as her sister. In fact, she's pretty bad at it. They usually hang up within seconds. Her sister is a pro!

I can do a lot of voices and accents. I'm good with voice work so I put on a show and piss them off. I find it fun. My fave was a guy from india calling about windows. So I acted like he called another india call center. He was getting further frustrated until he finally lost it and said " Fuck you mother bitch!" and hung up. I was on the floor dying of laughter.