Scam in absentia

[plonq]

"... expires shortly. So please consider this your final notice. Please press one now on your phone to speak with a live operator and lower your interest rate. Or press two to discontinue further notices. Thank you and have a great day."

When I came to work this morning, I had four of those on my voice mail. Obviously their script is set to start spewing its message the moment the phone stops ringing, whether a real person actually answers or not. It was obviously a scam call of some kind, so while I waited for some data archiving to finish running, I plugged what I had into Google to see if anyone had logged this particular one. It did not take much searching for me to figure out that this is the "Heather at Accounting Services" scam.

"Hello. This is Heather at account services. And we're calling in reference to your current credit card account. There's no problems currently with your account. It is urgent however that you contact us concerning your eligibility for lowering your interest rate. To as little as six point nine percent. Your eligibility expires shortly. So please consider this your final notice. Please press one now on your phone to speak with a live operator and lower your interest rate. Or press two to discontinue further notices. Thank you and have a great day."

Part of me feels insulted that they think that I am stupid enough to fall for a scam like this. Another part of me is appalled that a lot of people do.

Comments

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

And obviously there was no one monitoring the calls to determine that they were calling a corporate phone number.

I know my shop's voice mail has Amtrak's Sunnsyside Radio Shop in the first 5 seconds of the greeting.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Everytime I get such an email I ask myself -- "How did they get my email address? I refuse to give it out." And right away the scam becomes obvious, as if their refusing to name what bank they are doesn't also give it away.

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

Actually that was a phone call not an e-mail.
As for how they got your e-mail addy, there are a couple of possibilities.

A. They generate an infinite combinations of possible e-mail addys for any one given service. Not that hard with today's computers.

or

B. It was "harvested" from another 'puter that was infected with a virus, that had your addy on it.

I would lean towards "B" in this case.
I know "A" is done because if you look at the headers who will get a string of addys that are very close to each other.

[pfcottontail.livejournal.com]

Hello, I work for The Bank, give me your info so I can help with things! Thanks, The Bank.

One time when I was checking terminals for AT&T some dude was telling me how some trees that were cut down across the street need to be picked up. I was like, "AT&T isn't part of the city/government, I'll look into it but I suggest you call the local trash services." He didn't seem to get that there were different companies for these things.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Your AT&T story reminds me of the time a guy called our office because a piece of one of our trains had fallen through the back window of his car while he was driving under the bridge.

For some reason he was less-than happy when I asked him what he expected us to do about it, and suggested that maybe he should call his insurance company.

He kept pushing the issue until finally I accused him of lying. I politely informed him that I grew up in the city, and had crossed that particular bridge hundreds of times over the years. I explained how the bridge traversed water, that there were no roads, nor even room for roads under the bridge, and that the line we were speaking on was recorded (a white lie there - some of our lines were, but that one wasn't).

I asked him if he still wanted to pursue his interesting claim. He got very quiet for a few moments and then quietly hung up.