Current and Past Scams

I've had some calls lately from people saying my "subscription to Microsoft Windows" "expires today" and that all services will stop working unless I call them back and hand over an unspecified amount of money. They lost me at subscription. How can they get away with lying like that? People in Washington D.C. can commit all kinds of crimes and get away with them with the one exception of lying. If politicians go to jail for lying, how do they let other people get away with it? Why aren't telemarketers going to jail? I wonder how many people who use Macs get those calls.

Another scam call I get is the one in which they claim that the past three months of my credit card payment history have been amazing and that I qualify for their credit card! I don't use credit cards. How can my use of something I don't use be amazing? What a bunch of liars. It's called knowing your audience. They didn't.

One day I got an email from myself saying that I'd been hacked. They wanted bitcoin, or they would shut down my account and publish videos from my web cam showing me doing naughty, sexually explicit things. Before they got to the part about the web cam naughtiness, it sounded real and scary. Hey, I don't have a web cam. And if they had my password, how come I could still log in to get my mail? If I could do that, I could change the password myself. Lots of people fell for that one. Hmm, what are people doing with their web cams?

Years ago, when it was still relatively safe to answer the phone, I got a call from a company trying to sell me a magazine subscription. I told the girl I wasn't interested, but she didn't take no for an answer. I told her okay. Do they have Physical Review Letters? I figured they wouldn't. If you're not familiar with it, it's a very high-level physics magazine that wasn't generally available to the public and still isn't. I think it was around $200 a year at the time. It might have been more. It was super expensive for a magazine. The girl told me she didn't see it listed, but she had this other magazine that had a similar word in the title. No, I really want Physical Review Letters. What is it about? she asked. Physics. Oh, they had this other magazine. No, I really want Physical Review Letters. It's really good. I kept her going for a while. She eventually gave up. Was I being naughty? Or I was I saving someone else from getting a sales call? You decide.

For a very funny video by a guy who replied to a spam email, check this out. It's ten minutes, but it's well worth it, if you like laughing.

Have a great weekend.