As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
[SCAMS] It's all bullshit and I hate it.
MegaMan001
CRNARochester, MNRegistered User regular
CRNARochester, MNRegistered User regular
Modern life has a lot of problems, but one that doesn't seem to have any actual solution is the constant stream of scams and bullshit everyone gets exposed to. Robocalls claiming to be various financial institutions to hourly spam e-mails claiming to be distant relatives or displaced royalty. Neverending fake invoices.
For those of a certain age and younger this is just how things work. You don't answer unknown phone calls. You don't even glance at your Spam folders in text messages or e-mail. You don't click any links. You just ignore like...sixty, seventy percent of what gets hurled at you on a daily basis? It's just a steady stream of bullshit artists pounding on your door.
It fucking sucks and it's getting worse and there doesn't seem to be any will in improving anything.
My own story is about my parents who are in their seventies and are the kind of people who have gotten out of their way to not learn a fucking thing about technology. I mean, 'unable to change the source on their television', level of technological iliteracy that is just unreal to see in real life. They recently moved to my town because of their diminishing health, one consequence of is diminished cognitive capacity. Decreased short term memory, that kind of thing. In an effort to try and set up some financial guard rails after there were a series of checks that were written without being recorded and led to some bills not getting paid for no other reason than my parents couldn't remember who, if anyone, paid what, when.
After they moved here and we got the healthcare systems set up we set about getting their television going. I want to be very clear that all my parents do is watch Cable News. Probably sixteen hours a day of it. They don't socialize. They don't visit us (even with an Uber account on my credit card for rides). They wake up, watch TV, go to bed. So, television is a big deal. After going through the initial setup which - and I cannot stress this enough - involves a basic remote control and cable box (because they couldn't be asked to learn how to use a Roku or streaing services) - they managed to fuck up and put the TV on the wrong source approximately twenty times in the first month. I went over every time to click two buttons on their remote, write down instructions AGAIN, and walk them through it multiple times. At one point I actually wrote out a Step by Step guide that I fucking laminated. It even had a section labeled "If nothing is working, start here!"
By the end of the month I was going insane and finally told them they would have to just call Geek Squad or something because, no, I cannot leave work to fix the television. So, they did.
Months later I go to pick up my Mom for a healthcare appointment and when I walk into the apartment she's on her laptop talking to someone on the phone. From what I can hear she's talking about some invoice charge that wasn't paid. My Dad has no idea what was going on. I step in and talk to this random guy on the phone. He's explaining that my parents have an outstanding $400 bill from Best Buy. I take the laptop to see if I can find the e-mail and I notice the mouse cursor is bouncing around the screen, which is also flickering on and off. It was a brand new Galaxy Book so that felt weird, but my Mom said it had been 'acting up today'.
Then I see on the screen this DOS window with like...a thousand lines of random code and the last line is, no shit, "$40,000 transfer successful".
I swore out loud and the guy on the phone said, and again this is not hyperbole, "Sir, that money belongs to us now." I think I just told him to fuck off, hung up, turned off the laptop, then called their bank and froze the accounts. No money was actually transferred. My mom showed me the e-mail she had printed off with the phone number she called and it was 'GeekSquad<TEN RANDOM CHARACTERS>@gmail.com'. Obviously fake and designed to get someone like her on the phone.
At this point we cancel her appointment because I need to find out what happened. I take the laptop home, boot it up, turn off WiFi, and I see she had installed a remote desktop app. I call and she explains that the Geek Squad Guy told her to install the app and walked her through step by step how to do it. They got into her laptop and then spammed the DOS window with a bunch of bullshit. There wasn't any actual code in there (as far as I can tell), and I would guess there are way easier ways to lift money from a bank account electronically than some hacking shit that looks like it was off an NCIS episode. As far as I can tell, the next step of the scam would be to convince my Mom that the transfer was real and she needed to send X amount of real money before they would release it back to her - again all bullshit.
It took me probably twenty hours to make sure everything else was safe. Changed all passwords. Switched bank accounts. New credit cards. Froze their credit history. Enrolled in identity protection. Set up administrative rules on the laptop so she can't actually install anything without the password I have. Oh my God it was such a pain in the ass.
This was back in November, 2022.
Then, one month ago, my Dad texts me to say that his Facebook had been 'hacked'. I look at his account and it looks like he all of a sudden got a ton of spam invites to random Facebook groups. Of note, my Dad is Pakistani and all this shit was in Arabic so who the fuck knows what was real and what wasn't. I told him just to ignore those invites.
He decided to Google something like, "cancel Facebook phone number", which - predictably - led him to a random phone number that connected him to someone not with Facebook who talked him through installing a fucking remote access app on his iPhone. Then that guy got into his Facebook account and started posting softcore pornographic photos all over his timeline before demanding a ransom to release the account. I deleted his Facebook - which, by the way, is hilariously more complicated than I thought it would be.
Those are my stories, what have all of your experiences been? What steps have you taken to protect yourself or your aging parents?
For those of a certain age and younger this is just how things work. You don't answer unknown phone calls. You don't even glance at your Spam folders in text messages or e-mail. You don't click any links. You just ignore like...sixty, seventy percent of what gets hurled at you on a daily basis? It's just a steady stream of bullshit artists pounding on your door.
It fucking sucks and it's getting worse and there doesn't seem to be any will in improving anything.
My own story is about my parents who are in their seventies and are the kind of people who have gotten out of their way to not learn a fucking thing about technology. I mean, 'unable to change the source on their television', level of technological iliteracy that is just unreal to see in real life. They recently moved to my town because of their diminishing health, one consequence of is diminished cognitive capacity. Decreased short term memory, that kind of thing. In an effort to try and set up some financial guard rails after there were a series of checks that were written without being recorded and led to some bills not getting paid for no other reason than my parents couldn't remember who, if anyone, paid what, when.
After they moved here and we got the healthcare systems set up we set about getting their television going. I want to be very clear that all my parents do is watch Cable News. Probably sixteen hours a day of it. They don't socialize. They don't visit us (even with an Uber account on my credit card for rides). They wake up, watch TV, go to bed. So, television is a big deal. After going through the initial setup which - and I cannot stress this enough - involves a basic remote control and cable box (because they couldn't be asked to learn how to use a Roku or streaing services) - they managed to fuck up and put the TV on the wrong source approximately twenty times in the first month. I went over every time to click two buttons on their remote, write down instructions AGAIN, and walk them through it multiple times. At one point I actually wrote out a Step by Step guide that I fucking laminated. It even had a section labeled "If nothing is working, start here!"
By the end of the month I was going insane and finally told them they would have to just call Geek Squad or something because, no, I cannot leave work to fix the television. So, they did.
Months later I go to pick up my Mom for a healthcare appointment and when I walk into the apartment she's on her laptop talking to someone on the phone. From what I can hear she's talking about some invoice charge that wasn't paid. My Dad has no idea what was going on. I step in and talk to this random guy on the phone. He's explaining that my parents have an outstanding $400 bill from Best Buy. I take the laptop to see if I can find the e-mail and I notice the mouse cursor is bouncing around the screen, which is also flickering on and off. It was a brand new Galaxy Book so that felt weird, but my Mom said it had been 'acting up today'.
Then I see on the screen this DOS window with like...a thousand lines of random code and the last line is, no shit, "$40,000 transfer successful".
I swore out loud and the guy on the phone said, and again this is not hyperbole, "Sir, that money belongs to us now." I think I just told him to fuck off, hung up, turned off the laptop, then called their bank and froze the accounts. No money was actually transferred. My mom showed me the e-mail she had printed off with the phone number she called and it was 'GeekSquad<TEN RANDOM CHARACTERS>@gmail.com'. Obviously fake and designed to get someone like her on the phone.
At this point we cancel her appointment because I need to find out what happened. I take the laptop home, boot it up, turn off WiFi, and I see she had installed a remote desktop app. I call and she explains that the Geek Squad Guy told her to install the app and walked her through step by step how to do it. They got into her laptop and then spammed the DOS window with a bunch of bullshit. There wasn't any actual code in there (as far as I can tell), and I would guess there are way easier ways to lift money from a bank account electronically than some hacking shit that looks like it was off an NCIS episode. As far as I can tell, the next step of the scam would be to convince my Mom that the transfer was real and she needed to send X amount of real money before they would release it back to her - again all bullshit.
It took me probably twenty hours to make sure everything else was safe. Changed all passwords. Switched bank accounts. New credit cards. Froze their credit history. Enrolled in identity protection. Set up administrative rules on the laptop so she can't actually install anything without the password I have. Oh my God it was such a pain in the ass.
This was back in November, 2022.
Then, one month ago, my Dad texts me to say that his Facebook had been 'hacked'. I look at his account and it looks like he all of a sudden got a ton of spam invites to random Facebook groups. Of note, my Dad is Pakistani and all this shit was in Arabic so who the fuck knows what was real and what wasn't. I told him just to ignore those invites.
He decided to Google something like, "cancel Facebook phone number", which - predictably - led him to a random phone number that connected him to someone not with Facebook who talked him through installing a fucking remote access app on his iPhone. Then that guy got into his Facebook account and started posting softcore pornographic photos all over his timeline before demanding a ransom to release the account. I deleted his Facebook - which, by the way, is hilariously more complicated than I thought it would be.
Those are my stories, what have all of your experiences been? What steps have you taken to protect yourself or your aging parents?
I am in the business of saving lives.
+22
Posts
I could watch scammers lose days of their lives and get absolutely nothing, all day.
But yeah, it's post garbage at the dos prompt, pretend they transferred too much money, get the victim to open their bank account, edit the HTML of the bank page to pretend they actually transferred $40K into your bank account, and then ask/demand the victim to pay the money back.
Fucking pricks.
Man, that's such an asshole thing to do. I nuked her computer completely even manually via the DOS prompt and reinstalled windows from scratch and then had it under observation for a few weeks before trusting it (under administrative rules).
That's the real thing that pisses me off about this constant assault is there just isn't anyone doing anything to stop it. It's just an accepted part of life to not answer your phone or texts or emails.
I never answer my phone anyway because the people who want to get in touch with me do via text/signal/discord anyway. The only people calling me are my parents and that's only after we've texted and know we're calling.
Otherwise all calls are spam, student loans (ugh), or the company that ships my CPAP stuff that still can't get their website in order.
About three or four months ago, I hear the phone ring and him do his normal greeting. There's kind of an unusually long silence and I look over and he has the confused, concerned look on his face. He keeps saying 'hold on, hold on one sec, just hold on' before he finally puts his hand over the mouthpiece and looks over to me.
"It's [My 20 year old nephew], I think. He said he got in a car accident?"
Me: Oh no! Wait...why isn't he calling [My Sister]?
"He says he's scared of what she's gonna do. He says he hit..." He puts the phone on speaker, "What did you say happened?"
A voice comes through that phone that sounds a LOT like my nephew, but like...if his nose was completely broken. So kinda tracks with the story so far. He has this sobbing, choking cry going on and he says he hit a woman on the interstate, that she was pregnant and taken to the hospital. Real harrowing stuff. My dad has his mouth over his hand, but something just fucking feels weird.
"Hey, [Nephew]? Why did you call your mom? She'd just be happy you're okay..."
Him: No! She'd make me quit my job, she'd take my license...
I know my sister, she's a pushover and my nephew could get away with murder, so I'm shaking my head at this point.
"Hey...what's your mom's name?"
"Him": Why are you asking what my mom's name is?
"Because you're not who you say you are. How about this, what's MY name?"
Him: ....
"What city are you in?"
*Click*
They knew my dad's name, and I think my dad might have gotten fished into saying my nephews name during the call. Tried *69ing the number because honestly I was pissed they frightened my dad so much, but it went to a dead number. Horrible scam that targets elderly grandparents, and if I wasn't there I'm not 100 percent sure he would've figured it out.
It was kinda funny though, because a month or so later I happened to pick up my father's landline since he was out in his garden and it happened to be the same scam, only thing time they claimed they were his son. I let them go, since they thought I was my father, and they were pretending to be me. Eventually "I" wanted me to call "my lawyer" so I could help wire some money to keep him out of jail, possibly. Once he's done rambling, I quietly say
"I always knew you were a fuck up."
"Me": What?!
"What do you have to fuckin' say for yourself? What did you think I was gonna do, give you a hug? I swear whenever you get home your shit is gonna be in boxes on the porch."
*Click*
Did it change anything? Probably not. Haven't gotten one of those scams in a while though.
Steam Live: Azraith PSN: AzraithDeMitri
Wait no, my fathers Facebook got stolen and then used to scam money from acquaintances. It was impossible to get that account back/deleted.
Also that car accident scam sounds harrowing.
It's a standard pattern - use social media to look up info on someone, call them pretending to be a relative in trouble, and try to short-circuit their brain with panic.
Honestly, I kind of wish the government would just go open season on hacking all these operations. Yes, we know they're all overseas in sweatshop call centers in Asia. (And there's some really awful stuff about how the "workers" get treated in those operations too, iirc). Just take some guys from the three letter agencies and tell them to find as many of them as they can.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
When I was living with my parents I remember doing something on my computer and in the back of my mind I can hear my mother talking to someone on the phone. I eavesdrop a little while playing the game because my mind wanders, and I'm starting to become suspicious of what she's saying. Like, it sounds like a scam I had recently heard about but....no, I think, my mom doesn't visit websites that would scam her.
Then I walk into the kitchen to check and I ask her what she's doing. She explains that she's on the phone with microsoft and her account has been hacked and she is trying to move around money to pay for this issue. I tell her to give me the phone. I ask a few question to be absolutely sure and yup, it's a scam. I hang up, ask her what she did so far.
The guy had gotten her to install a program that gave him remote access. So I immediately shut it down. He tried calling back, I told her to block the number. Turns out my mother was checking cooking websites and she got a popup saying her computer was infected and she clicked the popup.
Fortunately we were able to stop things before any money was lost, she changed her passwords and had a guy from work check her computer to make sure it wasn't still being accessed. When I walked in she was starting to send him about 900 bucks to 'fix' the problem with her computer.
I am messing up a few minor details here and there because it's been a while and this was during my active addiction, but I seem to recall that this scam had a second part where they 'refund' the money and end up 'sending back too much' and then you end up 'repaying' thousands of dollars.
During election season I am constantly bombared by texts all for the same guy living in Arizona. All conservative bullshit and Trump shit. I don't know why some guy is signing up my number for all this shit, but it's annoying.
This is a little tangential, but I really hate it when a company’s fraud department calls and is like “please call us back at this number.” Or they want to talk to you right then via that outbound call. It’s so dumb. It should be “call us back at the number on our contact us section of our website” or “call us back at the number on the back of your card.”
No one should ever give information out or agree to any services or purchases from someone who calls them, barring the super niche situations like when you contact customer service via chat and they ask to call you and are able to do so immediately.
She tells me I have an account with 4 bitcoin in it that I opened a few years ago and I was about to lose access to it, so I wasted 10 min of her time until my lunch was done and then just said I wasn't interested in her scam
A week later she calls again, didn't realize she'd already tried the same thing with me
This time I spent about 30 minutes insisting that she wasn't actually speaking English and I couldn't understand a word she was saying, just escalating variants of this
Her: "I am speaking English sir, maybe you're not understanding me"
Me: "No I speak fluent English and you're definitely speaking another language, I can't understand a word you're saying"
After a while she started getting real annoyed and then her accent got worse, so by the end of it I actually did have trouble understanding her
Was a fun time. She never called back.
Its incredible how this scams adapt with technology, but at the core they are the same, preying on the elderly, weaponizing peoples fears or concerns and rushing people through a process they dont understand.
I have never been got with an internet scam, but there are so many bureacratic procesess that I just follow blindly (anything at a government ofice), and I always think, some guy that looks like he works here could tell me he needs to inspect my shoes and I would just stand there as the guy leaves the building with my shoes.
So this means I’ll get a long phone call every time apple updates iOS, and I’ll also get a long phone call when she gets any spam email that the filter doesn’t catch.
At least it’s better than actually getting swindled but oh my god I wish she would figure out some basics.
90% of my junk goes to junk or spam so I don’t see it but every now and then I’ll get some bullshit slip through.
Like the time I got an email in broken English talking about how I shamed myself by masturbating and they used the camera on my computer to film it and if I don’t send them Bitcoin they’ll send the video to everyone on my address list.
Obviously fake and if you want money from me…bitcoin is NOT the way you’re going to get it.
I got that one too, if you had to guess the nationality of the person that sent it, what would be your first guess?
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Which sounds really stupid when you say it like that, but they caught her at a point in her life when she was emotionally vulnerable and they took advantage of that.
Satans..... hints.....
And the worst part of helping him is that he has all the nudes sent to him as the background of his phone or just chilling there in the message thread where he's sending the gift card pictures.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Some type of middle eastern would have been my guess. I don’t remember the exact email but something made it feel like it was done by a middle eastern person.
maybe isn't a road to be going down, i feel
Similar thing happened to my family and they were pretending to be me. Problem was that I was in another city (was during undergrad) but they purported that I was in California and got busted by cops sitting on top of 30 pounds of weed in the taxi I took from the airport. They called my grandmother and used her to push the whole story which was really awful.
So I just get a call randomly in the day from my dad and was asked "quick question: are you in california?"
"No?"
"Okay thanks"
I think they ended up out a significant chunk of change (like couple thousand) that was supposedly for bail before my dad took a second and thought through everything.
Sorry, they referenced Allah being disappointed which is why I had that thought.
Didn’t mean anything by it.
Back when me and my wife were dating, we were in New Orleans for a weekend and I was talking to her about my aunt and uncle who go there all the time, and at some point must have mentioned their names.
Apparently someone near me was using a phone or something to record my voice and figured out my uncle’s home phone number, because he got a call the next day from a person claiming to be a lawyer saying that I had gotten in a drunk driving accident, had broken my nose, and was in jail. He then proceeded to put a voice on the line that plausibly sounded like me but with a broken nose (probably AI generated, maybe just a bad impression). The “Lawyer” then proceeded to ask for thousands of dollars in bail money.
Clearly I hadn’t done that.
Thankfully my uncle is smart to this bullshit, because the first person he called was his own lawyer to voice his suspicions and confirm this is horseshit, then me, then reported the scam to the FBI.
This is exactly where we are in my family. If anyone has a question about anything their first phone call is to me.
GOOD, FUCK 'EM
I’ve gotten this call as well
Has It Begun?
god i wish
PSN:Furlion
My partner almost got got by fake police warrants for traffic violations when we first started dating, she was falling for it since she's from RI and random bridges get tolls added and she thought maybe there was one outstanding. They called back while she was at my old apartment and I took the phone and immidiatly called them.out as clowns for asking for gift cards.
Scammers work because they prey on our insecurities and fears, fuck them all. Those scammers getting scammed videos are good catharsis as previously mentioned.
I've also sometimes had to call my parents when they send something a bit odd over text to verify that yes the link is safe to click and they are aware of sending it. They're not the type to get got by scams either but we're also very well aware that nobody is immune from falling for a ruse sometimes and anyone who thinks they are is also the type who makes things worse for themselves when they do get got because of pride preventing them from reaching out to others.