Spam emails

[mbc]

This thread has cheered me up, some real inspiration!
In general, I'm with bontbee though, if they're a real person trying to earn a crust in a shitty callcentre job I politely decline and wish them a good day.
@Dishmop, all on drink and drugs? you really don't waste any? Lol.

 

[Firefly]

This thread has cheered me up, some real inspiration!
In general, I'm with bontbee though, if they're a real person trying to earn a crust in a shitty callcentre job I politely decline and wish them a good day.
@Dishmop, all on drink and drugs? you really don't waste any? Lol.

This need for politeness does not apply to people claiming to call from Microsoft support because there is a problem with your computer. The end game of this scam is to steal passwords and personal information from your PC so that they can rob you. And yes, I have also found that these criminals become abusive if you point that out - I don't know if that is because they have found that actually cows some people into doing what they are told

 

[Dishmop]

I was thinking of the calls made by a human being...

errr..if nobody talks within three secs and I put the phone down, so I wouldnt know if it was a person or a machine.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

errr..if nobody talks within three secs and I put the phone down, so I wouldnt know if it was a person or a machine.

I do just that, but have stopped now as unfortunately I've hung up on my cousin Peter a few times - he has a realy bad stutter.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Am I the odd one out? I try to think of the caller as a person just doing a job

But are they though? - SWMbo's grandmother got caught by one just before Christmas - lucky she's got us to help her out. There's a company in our neck of the woods who are deliberately targetting the elderly and vulnerable - they even have a Welsh speaker onthe team to really get them to put their guard down - they managed to persuade SWMBO's grandmother to give them her credit card details - something she's never done before; to quote her ' they got me into such a twist I didn't realisd what I was doing' they then took £350.00 out of her bank in payment for a 'survey' of her house to see if she was eligible for energy saving grants etc. They even claimed to have a recording of the conversation giving them permission to take the money even though she was adamant she told them she was not prepared to pay any money out for anything.
And the bone.. err Police - don't want to know.
As for 'only doing their job' I believe that was the defence the prison guards at Belsen gave.

 

[Stiffy]

I was getting bombarded with sales calls most days, even had one phone in middle of the night telling me I had won a holiday, complete with the sound of a ships horn in the background!
My phones are all now equipped with BT call guardian , callers have to say their name or get directed to an answer machine or rejected. The service has a built in list of persistent cold callers which are automatically rejected. You can naturally also allow calls to get straight through and have the choice of zapping those who shouldn't.
Great service and cant recommend it enough just wish there was something similar that works for the email spammers/scammers/ phishers !
S

 

[Firefly]

wish there was something similar that works for the email spammers/scammers/ phishers !
S

I use Outlook/Hotmail, Gmail and MS Exchange. I have to say I find all of them very good at sorting all those things from real mail. I'm quite assiduous in reporting phishing mails to Microsoft (which Hotmail supports) but, other than that, do no training or manual filtering, and it is so unusual to get spam in my inbox that it really pulls me up short when it happens - and I do get 15-20 spam emails per day.

I'm as grumpy as anyone about much modern tech, but this is one area where I think the pointy-heads are winning

 

[Arfermo]

It think that one of the main sources for unsolicited phone calls is the 'Open' Electoral Register. Apparently it is available from the Registration Office for fee and if you are on the 'open' list then you get unwanted phone calls from those who subscribe to it. Motto tick a box asking to be left off the open list and eventually the database gets so out of date they have to get another copy and hopefully you will not then be on it. Anybody else found this?
As for the other junk, TPS (and MPS) simply don't work. To automatically block unsolicited number withheld calls by BT costs money. Emails are easily dealt with by blocking the URL. They seems to find ways around but just add the new one to the blocked list. Simples. Like others SWMBO and I get fed up with being told my PC is up the creek but can't seem to stop that one so I let them gabble on while they think I'm winding the PC up. They get tired eventually and fxxx off and a couple of weeks later the bloke in India is back again. Just put it down to them being a bit - no a lot - thick or pay BT!!!.

 

[Firefly]

There is a big distinction between the various lame marketing ideas that people try over the 'phone and the "Your PC is broken" people - the latter are engaging in blatantly criminal activity (data theft).

The phone database turnover must be pretty slow. 15 months after moving to a new house and being assigned a new number, that I assume must have been unused for at least a while, we still get several marketing calls a week for "Mr Inchley". If anyone knows him, could you let me have his number ;-)

 

[midnight sun]

I do just that, but have stopped now as unfortunately I've hung up on my cousin Peter a few times - he has a realy bad stutter.

I have a customer with a bad stammer. Unfortunately I have hearing problems. As you can imagine, conversations are long and quite noisy!
Still, we manage!