Unfortunately these days my iPhone seems to flag almost every unknown number as “potential spam”. I’ve missed several important calls because of this 
When I was trying to open the traditional IRA, I called them and they had to verify everything every time they transferred me to another person. They also sent me codes I had to read to them. Then the next day they called me. Again with the info and the codes. Then they screwed it up so there were many calls back to me with supervisors and still, with the codes.
One called me, I was at a doctor’s appt so they had to call back later. Well, then my eyes were dilated and again with the codes but I couldn’t read it off a text message. Asking me all kinds of questions and finally I could enlarge my phone screen and read the code. It is annoying.
But what drives me crazy is when you call the insurance customer service for anything you have to enter your DOB and zip code and 5 other things, and then they finally transfer you to a person and the first thing they ask is you DOB and zip code. Why ask in the first place if they can’t do anything with the info being put into the computer. Sometimes I don’t put it in and just wait for the live person (the privilege of being old and claiming you don’t know the info).
I also think some of the information they ask would be clearly available to a person who found your statement - name, address, zip code, acct number.
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I signed up for Spotify with the 4 months free Black Friday offer. The first 1+ months seemed to go well. I added ~100 liked songs. I mostly listened to my liked songs and some similar to my liked songs that Spotify mixed in. I am not especially in to music, so I had only ~2-3 hours of listening per week, usually while driving.
After that first 1+ months, the Spotify mixed in songs started getting far off from liked songs, something in Spanish with artist names I didn’t recognize. My first thought was Spotify was favoring less well known artists that allowed Spotify to play their music for free, to get their name out. It was not a big deal at first. I’d skip over the song I didn’t like and/or turn off Spotify suggested music, playing just my liked songs.
However, it soon become worse. My music home page was full of lists related to Spanish reggae – Pista Alterna, Energia Armonica, Vibra Secreta, …, with few lists related to the music I like. The DJ mode suggested almost all Spanish reggae songs. This was too annoying to ignore, so I looked more closely. My recently played list showed that someone had been using my account to listen to Spanish reggae almost constantly throughout the day, every day. I logged out of all devices, and changed my password, which seems to have stopped the other person from using my account. Unfortunately I don’t see an easy way to clear my music taste profile.
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Here’s an odd one. My husband had a message this morning, “bbq or steak?” I am the only one that would ask him that and I was sitting by him. It would have been real easy to answer that question. Not so much scam as spam.
I got an email this morning, referring to me as coach and talking about signing up—deleted as spam.
If you don’t recognize the number, it’s almost definitely a scam. It’s called a “wrong-number scam” or “conversation seeding scam”.
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I keep getting political texts. First from Mark Kelly asking for money for his legal battles, but several this week for other political PACs or to support certain bills (credit card interest limits) or anti-ICE or pro-ICE.
I don’t know who sold my phone number.
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This kind of question to me would be easy to fall for unless like us, it was early in the morning and only the two of us would ask it. It is so easy to fall for these kind of harmless looking questions.
In brief (for those unfamiliar with this type of scam), here’s how it typically works:
Once the recipient responds to the random text (most just write back “Who’s this?”) the scammer gets a conversation going. Very quickly, they become friendly and flattering, telling you how nice you are. They introduce themselves, usually claiming an exotic background and often share a photo of a very attractive foreign man/woman they say is them.
After some friendly back-and-forth, they casually mention how financially successful they are. By this point, enough rapport has been built that the victim naturally asks how they made their money. The scammer is happy to explain and eventually steers the conversation toward a “safe, private investment opportunity”, usually involving fake crypto or currency trading platforms that appear to generate impressive returns.
Once the victim is convinced the system is legitimate, they invest real money - only to lose it all.
Bottom line: if you receive a random text like this, don’t engage. Delete it and report it as junk.
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I just can’t imagine sending real money to someone I’ve never met in person or don’t have a professional relationship with, like a service provider.
I probably posted about my HS friend – a brilliant woman; went to Radcliffe – who met someone online, thought he was nice, cool, friendly; tried to meet him in person but was put off several times – and then he asked if he could borrow something like $250,000. She was smart, as I would expect her to be, and just said no. He later asked her for $90,000, and she just blurted out, “I am NOT loaning you any money!” Surprisingly, she never heard from him again.
I’m just fascinated that someone would try that, and that there must be people who go along and send money.
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This wrong-number / “pig butchering” scam works a little differently. After establishing what feels like a genuine relationship, the scammer convinces the victim that they’re making money for themselves using a new trading app or platform the scammer introduces. The system is usually very sophisticated and looks completely legitimate, similar to Fidelity, Robinhood and other brokerage apps.
Because the victim believes they’re investing their own money and will benefit themselves (not giving or loaning it to someone else), they’re much more willing to transfer real money. By the time they realize the profits were fake, the money is gone.
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Watch out for new scam spoofing apple.
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I see in my spam folder that Wilma and Lorraine are looking forward to meeting me on Tinder. Alas, they will be disappointed.
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This has come up before but is worth mentioning again: be sure to get numbers to call for customer service from reliable places like the back of your credit card or the website of the company.
These days, rather than showing you the traditional list of links when you run a search query, Google is intent on throwing up AI Overviews instead. Scams are now making their way into AI Overviews as well, apparently injecting Google’s AI answers with fraudulent phone numbers that you shouldn’t trust. The design of AI Overviews, which picks out information from the web and presents it as fact rather than encouraging you to do the research yourself, is making people much more susceptible to this kind of con.
from Google’s AI Overviews Can Scam You. Here’s How to Stay Safe | WIRED [may be behind paywall]
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Jeez. It’s a scary world out there.
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Within the last few days, I got a very real looking message indicating I needed to click the link that I had to report to court to deal with my tolls unless I clicked the link to do something. I can’t remember exactly what it said, but I did check to make sure it was a known scam before I deleted it.
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Can someone remind me what the purpose is of the scam where you receive a package that you never ordered addressed to someone else at your address? I received a package of Enfamil, with coupons and congratulations and so forth, for someone I’ve never heard of. What is someone trying to accomplish with this scam?
I wouldn’t call it a “scam” so much as a marketing strategy. The company gets your mailing address from some baby-related website/list/registery, then sends free coupons/samples hoping that you’ll become a long time customer with them. New mothers often have high expenses, so there is a lot of potential revenue for becoming future customers.
This is called a brushing scam. Unscrupulous sellers use it to artificially boost ratings through fake product reviews. The way it works is that they create a fake customer account, add a random address (often taken from public sources), and purchase their own product. Once the item ships, they can write a “verified purchase” review, since shipping is required for a purchase to count as verified.
You don’t need to take any action — you were simply picked at random.
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