Day after day, I receive calls from thieves in India. For several months, they said they were with Microsoft and that my computer had a virus that they wanted to help me fix. Now, they claim to be with a credit card company wanting to lower my interest rate. What’s sad is that people fall for these tricks all the time. Often, the elderly are the most vulnerable – not only because they tend to have a fixed income, but because they are also more easily confused and duped. Because of this, I have made it my civic duty to waste as much time as possible on the phone with the scammers. After all, the more time they waste talking to me, the less time they have to scam an elderly grandmother.
Just a few days ago, I received two calls in a single afternoon from hackers – and I took them both for a ride. When they asked for a credit card number, I gave them one of the test credit numbers typically used by developers for application testing – just google ‘test credit card numbers’ for a list. They asked for a bank name, I said Wells Fargo. They asked for birthday, last four of SSN, and other information. I provided false – but believable – answers. Then, after providing the information, they asked me to stay on hold while they verified my data. After another minute or so, the scammer got back on the phone: “We contacted your bank and found out that you are an *********” and hung up on me. Few things are quite as fun as having a scammer call you names or swear at you because you wasted their time!