Damn those Scams

Even the most technical-savvy people get scammed.  Russell Beattie got phished last week, and now he’s getting a barrage of scam/spams.  I had this happen to me last month.  A nigerian scammer won an auction of mine, and asked me to not use pay pal.  He had the audacity to use a netherland’s address/yahoo account, then proceed to ask me to send it to his son as a gift down in Nigeria.

After contacting Ebay, they were pretty apathetic about it. All they did was refund me the percentage of what I would’ve had to pay if the person actually did pay, but they did not offer to refund me the listing fee, and wouldn’t even let me relist the item.  They told me to use the “second-chance” offer to other bidders, so basically, I would have to sell my product to someone else for a lower price.  If Ebay isn’t incited or angry about scammers infiltrating their site, how am I supposed to believe they even care to police themselves that well.

I’ve always wondered how these scammers are starting to get cell phone numbers as well as any relevant referential information from those numbers, now I know.  Damn these scumbags

From engadget:

Your cellphone provider may have a detailed privacy policy that would seem to protect your calling records and other personal data from data brokers. But it looks like the data pirates have the upper hand as they’ve begun stooping to tactics like pretending to be handicapped customers and service provider employees, with the aim of wresting your info from gullible call-center workers

from gizmodo

If you’ve ever gotten a marketing call on your cellphone and wondered how the hell they could have gotten your number, you may have certain websites to thank. A local Florida TV station decided to do an investigation into this kind of thing and discovered that some websites will sell the last 100 phone numbers you may have dialed to anyone who has your phone number already. Sites like Locate Cell sells these private numbers for $100. These sites are, unfortunately, not illegal, but the TV station suggested calling the Attorney General’s office if you find this has happened to you. Nasty!

Hmmm, maybe this is why I’ve been getting spam/scam phone calls and I didn’t know how or why they got my phone number.

NPR finally covered what was floating around the net for a few months, how to stop waiting 20 minutes before talking to a live person when you call customer service for most large corporations. For example, you have a problem with your credit card and you call American Express, only to be prompted to type in your card number, press 1 for english, etc. Or your cellphone service has a billing mistake and you try to call Cingular only to be rerouted to their automated answering system. Its funny to hear Steve Inskeep from Morning Edition, a usually pretty muted guy, get so excited to learn how to skip all the annoyances when calling AppleCare.

Strangely enough, NPR doesn’t actually link the list on their website, so here it is in all its glory.

After receiving 2 phone calls from this number, I googled it and was annoyed that somehow, my phone number had leaked into the spam-machine of scam/telemarketing according to this link to Rippoffreport.com.

I called T-mobile to report it, and see if I could have it blocked and the best answer they had for me was that they could change my phone number. So there-in lies the rub, you can now keep your phone number, and take it to any carrier, and no one is ever going to lose your number, and they’ll always be able to contact you, but what happens when your phone number is poisoned? Do you give up all the benefits to keep your privacy? What a pain the ass.

I registered my cell phone number on http://donotcall.gov as suggested by someone. They called about 6 or 7 times, each time I ignored the call. Strangely enough, after I registered, they’ve called twice but each time I had missed the call since I didn’t have my phone on me. Next time they call, I’m actually going to pick up and alert them that I am on the list, and kindly request them to take me off their list, and if they don’t, I probably have some legal recourse. Oh how I hate telemarketers.