In these uncertain times, when so much of our country is locked down due to the pandemic, there is one thing that remains a constant, one thing that you can rely on. And that is people are still going to try to scam you.
Internet-related Phone Scams
My wife received a call only yesterday, oddly enough from a person with a very strong overseas accent, telling her they were from the NBN and that she needed to download software to optimize our internet speed. When queried several times why this call was not coming from our actual internet service provider (we live in the bush – no sign of the NBN anywhere near us yet) they just kept saying ‘Because of lockdown’.
I often get calls on both our home phone and my mobile and its always the same. Someone with an accent that sounds like it’s been gargling curry, telling me that they are from Telstra and that our computer is infected. It is imperative that I download software to kill the virus immediately! What seems to stump them every time is when I ask them what my name is. I mean, they rang me, surely they should know shouldn’t they? When on the home phone they always give the name of the relatives we inherited the number from 5 years ago. On the mobile they simply hang up. Poor, poor research skills from the scammers.
E-Mail Scams
There are too many and they are too prolific to list! Everything from that my Foxtel details need to be updated (we don’t have Foxtel) to a Nigerian Prince wants to send me a few hundred million dollars, if only I will send him $6000 for the transfer fee’s first. Seriously – how many decades have some of these scam’s been running for?!
The Latest Scam – Words with Friends
That’s right ladies and gentleman, scammers have now discovered that innocent little Scrabble App that lets you match wits with your buddies using your spelling skills. Nowhere is safe!
I get these about once a week. And they all follow the same playbook:
Step 1: First off you will get a challenge from someone, always a young attractive woman with either an impressive chest, legs or both. This person will also always be a Lvl 1 player meaning they have never even won a single match. Personally I’m at Lvl 14 so it doesn’t make much sense for someone at Lvl 1to challenge me, but then they aren’t really after a game are they.
Step 2: they will play a few words. Always 3 letter words or less. I have yet to receive a 4 letter word from any of them.
Step 3: Then comes the personal messages. Always a greeting, followed up with some generic pleasantries and really wanting you to chat.
If you ignore all the messages then they quickly quit the game. After all they are not really interested in playing Words With Friends, they want your details and to scam you. And they use the old bait of young attractive women who really want to talk to you.
Once the scam had proven ineffective and that particular profile has disappeared, the next day the pattern will repeat:
Once out of curiosity I actually answered their messages to see what Step 4 would be. And that turns out to be trying to get some of your personal information:
I’m sure if I could have been bothered to keep up the ruse of falling for their scam there would have been far more personal questions on the way. But my interest had waned at this point. I also tried looking up some of the profiles on different social media and couldn’t find any of them. You would think young hotties like this, if they are interested in chatting so much they will even do it in Words with Friends, would be all over things like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook but no. Why, its almost like these people don’t really exist outside the game!
So ladies and gentleman, beware the scammers. They are more active than ever right now with people being isolated at home, hoping that you are stir crazy or bored enough to fall for what they are selling. Don’t give you details to a stranger on the phone, don’t accept the email with the dodgy spelling, and certainly do not think that hot young women are trying to get to ‘know you better’ via a scrabble app.
Like Scalpers, Scammers are a bane on humanity – we can only hope they are all anti-vaxxers as well and that Covid will take care of the problem for us.
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