Beware of fake call centers

Question

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/3-held-as-fake-call-pune-call-centre-that-duped-11000-us-citizens-busted/articleshow/62827937.cms

This type of scam has happened before.

Answer 1

I'm glad to see that they finally busted those phony IRS scam guys! I had a few of those calls and like I do with the other fakes? I just hang up on them. I can't believe that they did actually scam 11,000 people. I saw through that scam right off along with the Canadian pharmacy or Windows Tech support scams. I get a kick out of it when they call with an Indian or whatever accent and say : Hello, this is John from Windows tech support. John? I think not.

Wish they would bust all of these scammers as it gets tiresome.

Comments

I got many messages from fake Canadian pharmacy. I don't know how they found my email address, maybe from Facebook, Blurtit or my website. Maybe some website sold my email address. I got a message from a person who represents as Melanija Trump two days ago. The weirdest scam was when scammers informed me that FBI found my email address at some scammers and offered me money.

Answer 2

I got a message from fake call center 12 years ago. I was informed that I won millions of dollars. I didn't believe them. Message was from UK. I don't know how they knew my phone number.

Comments

I never got a phone call (that I answered), but I used to get lots of emails telling me that I had won millions of dollars in lotteries (that I had never entered).  All I had to do was to send them my bank account number so that they could deposit my winnings. Or there was a rich daughter of a recently deceased politician (usually from somewhere in Africa) who wanted to deposit her inheritance in my bank account because she needed to transfer the money out of her country quickly (before it was confiscated by her father's political enemies) and she trusted me.  Of course she also needed to know my account number. 

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I got many similar messages. While I was using Facebook, some fake girls saw my email and contacted me claiming they are African refugees living in Dakar. I found a Facebook page about them and saw it is a scam. I deleted my Facebook account because of them. Since then, they contact me rarely. I found on Quora and Yahoo Answers that they are scammers.  Millions of people get the same messages from them. One guy from Canada wrote me that he was getting the same messages from scammers via letters long time ago. 

Answer 3

Yes, also here, fake call centres or real ones are "invading" us since a certain number of years - it is a mixture of aggressive advertisement, "polls", spams, scams, and dubious offers. 

The problem is that many of them collect as much as possible personal data and connections, which are sold further ...

All we can do is to use filters and checking first who's calling us, before accepting to answer.

Answer 4

The federal "Do Not Call" registry is a joke.   We average 3 or 4 fake calls every day.  We never answer if we don't recognize the calling number.

Comments

@Tink: It is a joke! Think I registered twice and it did no good. After March 10th here, you have to dial a 1 and then the area code also just to make a local call. Took a week or so before they figured that one out! A week or two in peace.