In some ways, I admire them for the fact they seem to keep on trying. To the best of my knowledge, they have never gotten anything out of me, yet they keep calling. And calling.
Phone scams seem to be picking up once again. Maybe they never actually died down. They were just busy calling other people. But on Saturday, I got a phone call from the Windows people again.
That one seems to be my usual. I have no idea why. Maybe they just keep giving my number to new recruits as a test, since I generally try to see how much abuse I can pile on before they hang up on me.
This time, when the caller said he was from Microsoft calling about a problem with my Windows computer and asked if I was the chief user, I just asked if he was the chief thief. He tried to tell me he was not a thief, but I explained that from my point of view, taking over someone’s computer and holding it for ransom was pretty close to theft. He did not have an answer when I asked if he out thief on his resume when he applied for a new job, and disconnected before I got to the question about whether or not his mother was proud of him for his choice of career. That one usual gets them and tends to really upset them.
But talking to an actual person is almost a treat. So many of the phone scams these days are automated. It takes the fun out of toying with the caller if it’s an automated voice.
Like the charges to you credit card you can reverse if you just call them back. Or your social insurance number being used for illegal purposes so you had better call them back or get arrested. Or an Amazon package stuck at the border that needs your attention.
Most of them seem to be automated calls. I guess even phone scammers became hard to find during the pandemic.
But it seems that every year, around the time when people start filing taxes, we also start getting phone calls from people at Canada Revenue Agency. Just be careful. While CRA may indeed call people on rare occasions, they will not look for payment with I-tunes gift cards or something similar.
I have yet to figure out why they can’t find a way to shut these people down, but there always seems to be more of them. Maybe the best thing is to treat everything as if it was still April 1. Don’t believe anything.
In the meantime, I’ve been selected for a two million dollar grant from some organization that doesn’t seem shady at all. I’ll let you know how it goes.
