Quote Originally Posted by Drummond View Post
Possibly some scammers are more sophisticated than I'd give them credit for (... depends on who they are ?). But, I suggest a VERY easy, simple, litmus test that can be applied to any suspected scammer trying to contact you.

Simply ... ask THEM to give information about YOU ... assess for yourself, if you can, what information about you they SHOULD already have, if they are really who they claim to be. The last scamming attempt I was subject to was stopped in its tracks by my asking the caller the simple question: 'If you are who you say you are, you'll have a database containing basic information. Tell me .. WHO AM I ?'

The caller abruptly rang off, and didn't call back.

Maybe in the US, scammers do more to attempt research on their hoped-for victims. But in many instances, they'll have scant info to start out with ... remember, their approach is to get information from YOU, not the other way around. Counter it by probing to see what, of a basic nature, they can tell you they already have (and should have !) on file about you. My guess ... almost always, they'll fail that test.
Excellent, thanx for the suggestion.

Ask callers who they suppose they are calling. I got some bad calls from our medical service carriers that seemed to me very close to scams and I ended up protesting to the company vehemently. (I think they had lost all our records, is actually what happened, because they sent us cards in the end with out-of-date info, and they had been badly hacked: MedStar, it was in the news. I think they had one of those encryption hacks.) These callers did know who I was, but they were still very shifty. If they don't know who I am, they are certainly scammers, but they could be anyway if hackers got the info. We've all been hacked six ways to Sunday by now: I know we have, by several companies that had our data that was hacked by Eastern Europeans or whatever with total data abstraction. I don't think they can do as much with all that as people feared, because it takes humans to sort it and use it. Mostly it's still email scams, and that I'm pretty good against. Though they are getting better and better and getting through the spam filters more and more lately.