The latest phone scam

[captain queeg]

I’ve been getting a lot of messages saying someone found a package from a couple months ago and want to deliver it to me. This is on top of all the usual texts from “amazon” And “PayPal” Needing to clarify one thing or another. These are texts, on top of many calls from unknown numbers leaving no message. I can block the numbers but they have some way of generating endless new ones. And the occasional text saying hi, is this (...)? It’s not hard on me really, I never answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number and I really just don’t communicate with many people. I think it would be more of a pain for someone that had a business phone or something.

[soothsayer]

1. It's a good scam because the mail is so jacked up

These scammers are really good at being topical

[WhiteTara]

2. I get texts from "Ted" at "Fedex"

I've been thinking of contacting Fedex, but I'm lazy so I just delete them. Fedex would never send a text like that.

[MiniMe]

3. My housemate has been getting texts like that.

I told her it is a scam and to ignore it. I don't trust anything that comes across my cell, be it email, text, or a call. I don't answer my phone unless I recognize the number.

[bamagal62]

4. All I get for the past 2 years are

Messages from a Chinese lady. Embedded in her voice mail is “bank of america”. My son speaks Chinese and can’t figure out what she’s saying. My guess is it must be Cantonese because he speaks mandarin.

[TheBlackAdder]

5. I stopped ignoring calls. I answer them, say "hello," mute the phone and waste their time talking.

.

As long as your phone exists, they will not remove it from the system. If you press the Remove this number, you confirm that you're answering the phone and they will call again and sell your number to others. I just answer and waste their time. My kids will actually stall them by talking for a while before the caller realizes they are being gamed.

Some will ask to press 1 or 5 to speak to someone, I'll do that. You'll hear a weird bleep noise and then some call center person with ESL will give a name like Andrew or Steve or something.

These calls won't ever go away, and they spoof a lot of local numbers or businesses.

Domestic callers will be some asshole sitting at a desk with a dozen burner cellphones and he'll dial a bunch of numbers and sometimes they can't answer their own calls because they're answering another one.

The best way to get them is to waste their time. I've noticed that my calls have dropped a bit, but it took about a year for this to happen.

.

[jimfields33]

6. I've gotten 3 by text message.

Kinda annoying. The first one I did think about for a minute. Then I thought if I haven’t worried about it since June probably didn’t need it. Lol. The second text came with a different area code and knew that it was nonsense.

[marlakay]

7. Don't click on the link whatever you do

I have been getting that text to. Googled the number and found on a sheriff's site where they were warning about it. One of those that if you click on link downloads stuff into your computer messing it up.

[Wolf Frankula]

8. Ignore anything from criterion.co.za

It's a scam.

Wolf