Congratulations! You've won a valuable prize! About hackers, scammers and deceptions.

[eider]

If I have picked the wrong section for this topic, please would the bosses correct that.

In 2008 I was training retail investigators and store detectives for a large supermarket company, but many of the old laws about detaining and arresting had been redacted three years before and the digital age was racing in to every part of Retail. The company had just opened its first ever self-till checkouts and I was observing how customers were reacting to them when I saw a young schoolboy approach a self-till with an expensive computer game; he pressed all the buttons, answered all the questions, paid money in to the machine, received his receipt and was happily walking away along the pavement outside when we stopped him. I wanted him to talk with the manager about his purchase. He had paid for an apple, but to any casual observer he had carried out the entire transaction exactly correctly, yet he had bought a £56 game for about 6p. He was about 9 years old and had figured out that scam or been told about it within two days of those new checkouts opening.

Oh dear....... things deteriorated rather quickly from there. The young pick up scams so quickly, and very soon after this shocker I had learned how to buy a £50 item for less than a pound using several different techniques....... I had learned from school children, mostly. It really was time for us old dogs to go fishing or gardening or whatever.

15 years on and the scams and hacks have become quite deadly. This week I watched a telly program about an elderly widow who had lost £18000 in savings from a single account which was not accessible online; she had received a telephone call from her bank (she believed) which had been initiated from the banks own branch telephone number (amazing) and to tell her that her account had been hacked and that the bank needed to move her funds to another account immediately. She had believed in the caller and didn't think but to answer when she was asked to give her account details.

You may think that such a scam is easy to perceive, but how about if you decided to pay for your vehicle tax online and attempted to enter the driver and licensing authority website for your area/state only to find yourself in a parallel fake website which was hooking in web searchers? Yes...... I actually got transferred to exactly such a website and filled in all the details of my vehicle, but I didn't complete the transaction because I was asked to pay £28 for the annual fee and in fact my electric scooter is tax free..... we do have to register such a vehicle just like any other but there is no charge.

This morning my wife received a call to tell her that she had won the post-code lottery. She is 'quick as a flash', my missus, but she didn't have to be in this particular case because she doesn't take part in that lottery at all. But she let the caller continue, feigned excited joy and was soon asked to pass over her bank and other details for the payment to be transmitted........ All of these scams are so easy to catch out, until the day when one catches us, for instance, supposing that my wife did take part in such a lottery...... might that make a difference to some?

Please tell us about the scams, cheats, deceptions and thefts that you have heard about.

There are so many, so varied, and all are dangerous to innocent victims.

[Sparko]

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[One Bad Pig]

A popular one I've come across is along the lines of "so and so from Upper Iguana has died and left you $50,000. But we need $100 to process the payment. Please wire us $100 and you'll get your money." My godson lost $800 that way.

[rogue06]

I entered a lottery for a free high quality pistol at a local gun and knife show back in the late '90s.

About a week later, I got a call saying I won but they needed something like $15 or 20 for processing and shipping.

Basically it was an obvious scam. I laughed at the guy and hung up.

A day or so later I got another call from a different person who was so smooth and practiced that I hate to admit that I might have suckered if it weren't for the previous ham-fisted attempt. I actually complimented the woman on her skill as a conman before hanging up.

[Sparko]

I got a few calls the other day from someone claiming to be my power company and they were going to disconnect my power because I had not paid my bill.

Problem: I am on autopay and the power company he claimed to be from is not the one I am on.

First time I hung up on him, Second time I played dumb and told him to go ahead and cut the power. He then got flustered and said something like "what? you want to lose your power? uh. but uh." Then I told him, 'yeah, since you are not my power company in the first place and this is an obvious scam and you are terrible at this" - then he hung up.

[eider]

A popular one I've come across is along the lines of "so and so from Upper Iguana has died and left you $50,000. But we need $100 to process the payment. Please wire us $100 and you'll get your money." My godson lost $800 that way.

Ouch! I'm sad to hear about that.

I sometimes get SMS messages on my mobile to tell me that a carrier or sales company like Amazon has sent 'the parcel' to me but that a small carrier fee is required to affect delivery....please pay (some petty amount) to our account asap. It's such a small amount that folks must be just paying it, but the sammers are really after the account details initially..... then they clear it right out.

[eider]

I entered a lottery for a free high quality pistol at a local gun and knife show back in the late '90s.

About a week later, I got a call saying I won but they needed something like $15 or 20 for processing and shipping.

Basically it was an obvious scam. I laughed at the guy and hung up.

A day or so later I got another call from a different person who was so smooth and practiced that I hate to admit that I might have suckered if it weren't for the previous ham-fisted attempt. I actually complimented the woman on her skill as a conman before hanging up.

I am most interested in all the varieties of 'Hey, you won!' and that sure is different!
This forum is accessible by anybody, I know, but it seems private enough to share some scams....... you're a boss so I'll leave that call to you.

Here was a store deception that we often had to test......
In the noughties we were testing a large DIY company's security procedures and security awareness training of all employees, and were visiting stores to actively test them. We were using several known scams to avoid payment for goods, and obviously we had letters of instruction to show when we either declared ourselves after the deceptions or if we should get caught. We never got caught...ever! One deception was to unpeel the stick-on barcode from a 0.70p plastic pot base and then stick it on to a high value item and take it to the tills for purchase. This deception is fairly safe if the deception gets found out at the tills because s/he can declare that they just picked that item up, unaware. We were instructed to ensure that the price difference had to very high and obvious to give checkout staff a chance. One day we purchased a rechargeable drill for 0.70p and when the deception was declared the store manager appealed, saying that the transaction wasn't obvious enough (!!!)..... so one week later my colleague and I visited the Greenford, London store again and purchased a sit-on lawn mower @£859.00 for the price of a plastic garden pot £3,49p; (the till operator was chatting with an adjacent till colleague about a tv soap program as this sales occurred) we asked for help to push the bloody thing out to our vehicle and then, as the two shop staff stared at my tiny little Fiat Panda we declared the test. The manager never lived that down.

People can get caught out so easily, and often their embarrassment and shame can deter them from reporting losses.

[eider]

I got a few calls the other day from someone claiming to be my power company and they were going to disconnect my power because I had not paid my bill.

Problem: I am on autopay and the power company he claimed to be from is not the one I am on.

First time I hung up on him, Second time I played dumb and told him to go ahead and cut the power. He then got flustered and said something like "what? you want to lose your power? uh. but uh." Then I told him, 'yeah, since you are not my power company in the first place and this is an obvious scam and you are terrible at this" - then he hung up.

The scammers get fed up with our mobile numbers giving no returns, and then there'll be a resurgence. It amazes me when folks with Filipino or Asian accents keep calling me with scams but my mobile is showing that the call came from our local STD number, or even our banks local telephone number....... they are getting so clever!

This morning I couldn't connect to the internet through my server......nothing. But after fumbling about in the system I discovered that I had to re-register with a new extra-long Password and then receive/return an identification number in a check-call to my mobile............. the internet outfit had been hacked, I'm guessing

[Ronson]

I got a scam phone call A LONG time ago (late 1970s) by a "company" giving away free cameras. I was excited and told my older brother and he told me it was a scam. "Did you enter a contest? Then you didn't win anything." So we went to the place to collect my free camera, but they said I had to buy $150 of film for it. I never did see the camera but it must have been a throw-away.

Got home. My brother called them back and told whoever answered that they won a free trip to Hawaii. Then told them they had to buy $10,000 worth of luggage to get the free trip.

[eider]

I got a scam phone call A LONG time ago (late 1970s) by a "company" giving away free cameras. I was excited and told my older brother and he told me it was a scam. "Did you enter a contest? Then you didn't win anything." So we went to the place to collect my free camera, but they said I had to buy $150 of film for it. I never did see the camera but it must have been a throw-away.

Got home. My brother called them back and told whoever answered that they won a free trip to Hawaii. Then told them they had to buy $10,000 worth of luggage to get the free trip.

That reminds me of a 1970s free holiday offer with travel and hotel thrown in. But the winners had to purchase two meals each day on the hotel......... Yep....
Rather expensive meals.

[rogue06]

I am most interested in all the varieties of 'Hey, you won!' and that sure is different!
This forum is accessible by anybody, I know, but it seems private enough to share some scams....... you're a boss so I'll leave that call to you.

Here was a store deception that we often had to test......
In the noughties we were testing a large DIY company's security procedures and security awareness training of all employees, and were visiting stores to actively test them. We were using several known scams to avoid payment for goods, and obviously we had letters of instruction to show when we either declared ourselves after the deceptions or if we should get caught. We never got caught...ever! One deception was to unpeel the stick-on barcode from a 0.70p plastic pot base and then stick it on to a high value item and take it to the tills for purchase. This deception is fairly safe if the deception gets found out at the tills because s/he can declare that they just picked that item up, unaware. We were instructed to ensure that the price difference had to very high and obvious to give checkout staff a chance. One day we purchased a rechargeable drill for 0.70p and when the deception was declared the store manager appealed, saying that the transaction wasn't obvious enough (!!!)..... so one week later my colleague and I visited the Greenford, London store again and purchased a sit-on lawn mower @£859.00 for the price of a plastic garden pot £3,49p; (the till operator was chatting with an adjacent till colleague about a tv soap program as this sales occurred) we asked for help to push the bloody thing out to our vehicle and then, as the two shop staff stared at my tiny little Fiat Panda we declared the test. The manager never lived that down.

People can get caught out so easily, and often their embarrassment and shame can deter them from reporting losses.

Switching price tags is a time honored method

When we were kids my brother took an expensive pro basketball and stuck it in the box for the really cheap basketball. The difference was over $10 (and back in the 70s that was worth a good deal more).

If I were the manager of the store where you bought the riding lawn mower for the price of lunch, I wouldn't be embarrassed. It's not your fault that there are dumb employees in the store. You generally don't get folks with a degree working a register. Even if you fired them chances are that their replacements wouldn't be a whole lot better.

[Thoughtful Monk]

I work in the financial services industry. We're pretty constantly trained on this stuff. Makes me awfully suspicious of everything.

[mossrose]

I work in the financial services industry. We're pretty constantly trained on this stuff. Makes me awfully suspicious of everything.

I am a homemaker, and I am awfully suspicious of everything, too.

Mr. mossy still wants to answer the phone every time it rings, but he's getting better!

We've even had calls from our home phone number on our home phone. Lately the scams have been from a credit card company for which we have no cards, or Amazon or some such that tells us our account has been suspended.

For the past several months I have been waiting for calls from clinics for appointments, so I would answer a call from a local number and it would be the credit card garbage. And once we answered one time they kept calling, always from a different number, and always the same recording. One day we had 12 calls in the space of about 45 minutes.

During the recent provincial election we had quite a few calls from both major parties. The UCP were mostly recordings advising us of town hall meetings, a couple of live calls. I took those, because I support them.

The NDP called us 3 times. The first 2 times I told them to stop calling me as I would never in this lifetime or another vote for anybody that represented their party. The third time they called, they asked to speak to the youngest person in the household. I told them they had been told twice not to call again, but nevertheless I handed the phone to MelMak. Who proceeded to tell them that he would never vote for anybody that represented their party in this lifetime or another. And then he told them not to ever call us again.

What a brilliant lad.

[rogue06]

We've even had calls from our home phone number on our home phone.

Yup. And since I've only got one phone plugged in and it would be in my hand in order to see who was calling.

Those, though very infrequent, I always answer.

I let them go on for just a bit and then interrupt them acting excited.

"Oh my goodness!^[1] This is so exciting. I was just asking myself how in the Sam Hill^[2] am I getting a call on my phone from my own phone that I'm holding."




1. you are free to choose your own expression

2. another opportunity to be creative and personalize it.

[mossrose]

Yup. And since I've only got one phone plugged in and it would be in my hand in order to see who was calling.

Those, though very infrequent, I always answer.

I let them go on for just a bit and then interrupt them acting excited.

"Oh my goodness!^[1] This is so exciting. I was just asking myself how in the Sam Hill^[2] am I getting a call on my phone from my own phone that I'm holding."




1. you are free to choose your own expression

2. another opportunity to be creative and personalize it.

I just don't answer.

The best email scam I ever got was from asking if I were alive or dead and I should let the sender know. I think I posted that here somewhere.