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

[Bill the Cat]

My daughter got married 2 weeks ago. You guys know here I work in the Intelligence Community and have for quite some time. I train all of my family members, but sometimes it simply isn't enough to beat the crafty scammers. My mother in-law had ran over a pretty sizeable tree limb in their truck the night before the wedding, as she returned home from the rehearsal. She's 81. She called her insurance to get a rental for the wedding the morning of. They told her she didn't have rental coverage and that she can just get a pretty inexpensive car from one of the major carriers through their web site. Well, she's 81... so she took to Google. She called an 855 number on one of the ads at the top and the "enterprise" rep gave her another number to call for their "same day" rentals. She was already stressed out about getting to the wedding of her granddaughter, seeing her family that she hasn't seen in over 5 years, dealing with my cantankerous 86 year old FIL, and having been the one to damage the truck in the first place. I was not available to help her because of the wedding day happenings, so she followed the instructions of the "Enterprise" guy that only a certain kind of credit card worked, and she could get one from Target. Well, she did all of the things I taught her not to do, and lost $300 USD out of the incident. She ended up driving one of their classic El Caminos to the wedding, so they did make it and enjoyed the ceremony. On Monday, we tried calling the 855 number back, but it rang fast busy (meaning it was spoofed or abandoned). She is still mortified that she allowed herself to get taken by these leeches, but it could have been MUCH worse had they got her actual credit card info instead of the gift card.

No one is immune to getting taken by these wastes of human flesh. My best advice is to be vigilant and trust no one that calls you. Only use the number that is on their public web site, and always request that you can call them back on the official number to continue to discuss. And look up Pierogi on YouTube to see a scam buster in action. Great content there.

[Bill the Cat]

It never rains but pours!!
Yesterday evening I also received a call from an 01884- number and on answering, a robot explained that I have been reported to HM Customs/Revenue and that a warranted officer will be coming to arrest me, and that I can discuss this situation immediately by pressing 1 on my keypad. I expect that many call recipients might be tempted to press 1 just to tell any person responding what to do with themselves, but I reckon that any answer wins for the sender because they are probably collecting numbers that reply at all, for sale by the thousand.

Where a worried person is answering then a trained deception artist might be able to gain a mass of information.

It's actually 2fold. They use the ones that answer to build a sellable database to other scam robocallers, and those that don't answer at all are used as spoofable numbers.

[eider]

My daughter got married 2 weeks ago. You guys know here I work in the Intelligence Community and have for quite some time. I train all of my family members, but sometimes it simply isn't enough to beat the crafty scammers. My mother in-law had ran over a pretty sizeable tree limb in their truck the night before the wedding, as she returned home from the rehearsal. She's 81. She called her insurance to get a rental for the wedding the morning of. They told her she didn't have rental coverage and that she can just get a pretty inexpensive car from one of the major carriers through their web site. Well, she's 81... so she took to Google. She called an 855 number on one of the ads at the top and the "enterprise" rep gave her another number to call for their "same day" rentals. She was already stressed out about getting to the wedding of her granddaughter, seeing her family that she hasn't seen in over 5 years, dealing with my cantankerous 86 year old FIL, and having been the one to damage the truck in the first place. I was not available to help her because of the wedding day happenings, so she followed the instructions of the "Enterprise" guy that only a certain kind of credit card worked, and she could get one from Target. Well, she did all of the things I taught her not to do, and lost $300 USD out of the incident. She ended up driving one of their classic El Caminos to the wedding, so they did make it and enjoyed the ceremony. On Monday, we tried calling the 855 number back, but it rang fast busy (meaning it was spoofed or abandoned). She is still mortified that she allowed herself to get taken by these leeches, but it could have been MUCH worse had they got her actual credit card info instead of the gift card.

No one is immune to getting taken by these wastes of human flesh. My best advice is to be vigilant and trust no one that calls you. Only use the number that is on their public web site, and always request that you can call them back on the official number to continue to discuss. And look up Pierogi on YouTube to see a scam buster in action. Great content there.

Ouch! What a very unhappy set of circumstances and a more-than-usually anxious person..........

I very nearly got scammed a couple of years ago when I needed to re-tax my motor scooter at the Driver, Vehicle & Licence Authority's website. After clicking on 'DVLA' I found what looked like an official website, entered it and entered all my details, but was saved from giving my card details because to license an electric power scooter is free of charge, we just have to go through the same procedure as other vehicle owners, and so when I was asked for an £80 payment I knew that this couldn't be right. But somebody somewhere knows a bit more about me!

[Sparko]

Note to everyone: Please do not post any actual links or email addresses if you are copying a scam email you have gotten. We don't want someone accidentally or stupidly on-purpose click on anything that could harm their computers.

[QuantaFille]

Ouch! What a very unhappy set of circumstances and a more-than-usually anxious person..........

I very nearly got scammed a couple of years ago when I needed to re-tax my motor scooter at the Driver, Vehicle & Licence Authority's website. After clicking on 'DVLA' I found what looked like an official website, entered it and entered all my details, but was saved from giving my card details because to license an electric power scooter is free of charge, we just have to go through the same procedure as other vehicle owners, and so when I was asked for an £80 payment I knew that this couldn't be right. But somebody somewhere knows a bit more about me!

I don't know about the UK, but over here, the official sites for that kind of thing vary by state, but ALWAYS end in ".gov".

[eider]

I don't know about the UK, but over here, the official sites for that kind of thing vary by state, but ALWAYS end in ".gov".

I can't remember what that false link to our UK DVLC looked like now, but it sure looked good!