There’s some insurance protection on those things you listed though, and you can’t take one person for five or six figures worth of catalytic converters. And Amazon typically replaces stolen packages.
Just spoke to my 89 year old dad who lives in a retirement community, he’s going to work on an article for their newsletter and look into whether there’s a local authority that would come give a presentation on how to avoid these things. My dad is one of the most naturally skeptical people I know, but I still wanted to mention it to him.
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Good job hopefully that saves someone. Fwiw the full details are different and worse than what was originally conveyed that I shared, I’ll update at some point when I have time. There’s almost certainly a local agency that will come out and do a presentation.
From my experience the last 24 hours, I’d keep it very simple on a personal level: it is ALWAYS ok to hang up on someone and call your child. Nobody legitimate will ever tell you not to speak to your family. It’s even ok to hang up on me and call me directly to make sure it’s really me.
I plan on putting something like this and a couple other warnings on a laminated card that has my cell number on it, and making him put it in his wallet.
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Was the overall theme that the scammers were pretending to be government in some way?
Couple years back one these scams claiming my wife had missed jury duty using her old addresses happened and she didn’t give them anything but took like 40 minutes before she could convince herself was a scam.
Think the biggest takeaway was governments don’t do anything official by phone
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Scammer Payback is your best bet or this. Still very unlikely to get recourse but he is much more directly involved with getting money back to individuals.
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Betsy DeVos has to be involved somehow. Between a MLM fortune and all the for private school scams….
I think he said they were pretending to be from Microsoft and that they called him, which already seems pretty sophisticated. I think more typically the victim is prompted to initiate the call. For example this is what happens to Phylicia Rashad in the opening scene of The Beekeeper, she’s just working on some spreadsheet when this pops up:
In real life I would expect this window to include the Microsoft logo and explicitly say you are calling Microsoft tech support.
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The one we had they called cellphone and said they had tried to serve warrants at our last 3 addresses which they listed out and claimed to be someone who came up as some sort of local law enforcement person on Google search. It seemed quite sophisticated
I have a feeling that this won’t help much. Your dad cannot be trusted with a computer or phone at all. Isn’t there a way to block incoming calls from unknown numbers?
Yeah, I mentioned this as the first thing they should know. My father and I also established a password in case he’s concerned he’s not actually speaking to me.
I’m not sure if different locations specialize in different targets but I’ve randomly read that Myanmar, along the Thai border, is a hotspot for Chinese gangs’ cybercrime operations, often by kidnapping their workers under false pretenses and holding them captive.
This is tough. On the other hand it is the customer’s money, they’re entitled to ask for it back, it would be a little shady if the bank refused to give your own money back based on their own suspicions.
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Think would be pretty easy to have big banks banking agreements that there a 1 business day hold if they suspect your victim of a crime and if consumers don’t like it they can go to elons big freedom bank or whatever
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I mean, my credit union still puts like a 7 day hold on any large check deposit even when it’s a fucking bank check. They could certainly impose a similar rule with withdrawals in cash over a certain amount.
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One of the more ridiculous aspects leading to this is how unsecured telephone and sms text are. That is basically the mechanism that facilitates all of this fraud. How is spoofing infinite USA phone numbers from some dirt shack in an Asian crime hotbed city a thing?
My parents (both within a year of 70) must get a half dozen or more scam calls per day, each from a unique number, and often from a “local” number or at least one that registers as same-state caller. And each time they’ll say, “Hmmm, Blanksville, McState, I wonder who that could be???” And every time I’m present for this I yell A SCAMMER FROM INDIA, THAT’S WHO.
I’ve been coaching them on this stuff for a decade and feel like their suspicion level is only marginally higher. That’s why I don’t think any amount of a good talking to is the answer to this. They are naturally way too trusting. I’ve tried to teach my mom how to check emails, websites, texts, and callback numbers for validity, but it seems like a losing battle against scammers who are always inventing new clever attack vectors.
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Test messaging is becoming dangerously close to non-functional it’s so clogged with scams.
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Yeah this is something we all take for granted but is actually unbelievable to still be a thing in 2024, and seems like something phone companies should be able to fix if they cared enough (but they don’t)
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Huh. I’m just 10 years younger and I already a strict policy against answering calls from unknown numbers.
I wonder what the cutoff is in age where the base tech savvy level changes.
I also wonder what shit I’ll be falling for in 20 years.
My Dad “caught” an embezzler just from being aware that numbers on a statement didn’t make sense yet he was very vulnerable in old age to phone and computer scams and fell for Kevin Trudeau shit on TV).
Summary
(He was on the board of the local small town hospital. He saw something didn’t add up and assumed that it was an error. He called the hospital president over to Dads office at the bank. Guy broke down and confessed on the spot. He couldn’t make restitution so it went to trial. Guy got 7 years I think. My Dad was on the news every day for a couple of weeks as the star witness. Guy had tried to keep his wife’s clothing store afloat and skimmed $300k. This was in the 80s
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Microsoft support then his bank’s fraud detection.
Scam your wife was targeted by is a common one, and yes govts never ask for money on phone.
My Dad was initially confused about who called who. Screen went black, froze for a while, eventually a number came up for 'Microsoft support" and he called it.
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In 2019, I took the below screenshot of a page I ended up on after visiting the Seattle Times home page:
As you’ve found, these fraudulent “tech support” scams are very often the way the scammers get their foot in the door.
A common vector for this stuff is malicious ads that make their way into the big ad-selling networks online.
I highly recommend installing a good adblocking extension in all web browsers. This one works great and is legit:
(Scroll down for installation instructions.)
You can get this set up so that it’s completely transparent to the end user. My grandfather hit stuff like the above screenshot a few times and would call me in a panic (thank goodness). I switched him to Firefox from IE and installed uBlock Origin and never had that problem again.
I haven’t found a solution I like for Android, so I am using an adblocking DNS, configured in my router:
(Used "method #2, manual configuration.)
It only helps when I’m on my home wifi, but that’s where I am the majority of the time, so it’s good enough. A benefit is vastly improved mobile browsing, with way fewer ads junking up everything.
Let me know if you have questions about either of these.
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This is one of the things I’m looking into wrt blocking, taking away his computer or phone is unfortunately a total non-starter from his end. He’d rather lose all his money (which very well may happen). My primary goal after freezing the remaining money and reporting to the FBI is to gain some sort of guardianship over his money, to have to authorize any transfers over a small amount. We’ll see.
I think it has more to do with adopting new technology than using stuff you knew how to use when you were 50 or 60.
I will and I probably will.