They likely know your first name because they got your phone number from a database that was hacked or sold which included your full name with your phone number. They don’t need AI for the voice - most people are not good at identifying a voice if the person is screaming or sounds distraught. Furthermore, if somebody is convinced that the person on the other side of the phone is their kid or grandkid, then the voice of that person will sound like the voice of their kid or grandkid.
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I think someone else mentioned it here too about the QR codes and parking. That happened recently in my town as well and several people got duped by it. It doesn’t help that the company who owns the parking garage has legit QR codes on the payment machine and posted around the structure to pay. You have to be so careful as these scammers get more and more sophiticated.
The recent AARP magazine had a huge article about scams and there are people quoted in the article who lost everything. It’s pretty scary how many scams target seniors or vulnerable people. Those romance scams are especially sad.
I have a friend whose daughter works as a case manager with vulnerable and poor populations and one of her clients just lost quite a bit of money after sending it to someone they met online who promised them they could double their money. Luckily, the person’s spouse figured out what was happening and they are trying to help and educate the client and keep it from happening again.
I have a coworker and they just found out that her great aunt was sending money to some guy who lived god knows where and was down on his luck and needed help and hopefully if she sends him extra money, he can come visit her. Luckily, her family stopped her before she sent this person any more money. Of course this same lady used to give quite a bit of money to televangelists.
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We’ve just started getting catalogs addressed to a previous owner of our home who hasn’t lived here in about 30 years. Why all of a sudden? They must’ve been Mormon because one of the catalogs we got was Deseret Books.
We also get a lot of junk mail addressed to us as well. Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of these invitations to “How to Make Medicare Work for You,” where you listen to a presentation and get a free dinner. The best one was a “Cremation Event,” at a local steakhouse. I get the idea is to learn about options after you pass away, but cremation event makes it sound like we all get to sit there and watch a cremation….
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My daughter got a letter from Fidelity at my address (it was the permanent address she used in college and several years later for things like her tax documents). I told her and she said she got one too but thought it was a scam. I said it didn’t look like a scam but maybe they were trying to find someone with her same name (not common but not crazy unusual).
This is a kid who never saved, never opened a 401k and has had her same (and only) bank account since she was born. I told her to call and find out, and of course she put it off for several weeks, maybe a month, but today called. She drilled the guy about whether it was a scam, she’s my kid so was reluctant to give her SSN, but finally did.
It was stock from when she worked at Starbucks while post college and in grad school. She’s getting about $600! Her manager never told her she had to open a Fidelity account, just that it was all taken care of.
Good news for her.
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Received an email today from Social Security Administration about “ mandatory account synchronization”. I have an earning data conflict and my account is on hold.
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I only occasionally look in my Gmail scam folder. So many emails telling me I won something - two I noticed were from Lowe’s and AARP. Came from the same email address.
I keep getting emails saying I’ve won a power drill or a BBQ
I’ve won so many power drills over the past year, I can set up my own shop.
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Another pfishing email today. This one purporting to be from Chase. I called the number on the back of my card & reported it. They agreed it was pfishing. I asked for an address to forward it to and they told me phishing@chase.com. I forwarded it.
I was surprised I had to prompt the agent on an email to forward the pfishing to, for their team to examine.
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Can you double check? Everything I’ve seen says it’s phishing, not pfishing, in that email.
Sorry, you’re right, phishing@chase.com. They replied via automated email, reminding folks to be careful. Corrected here & above.
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I thought I might be getting scammed somehow by the company that sold me a stick vacuum on Amazon. After receipt and activating the warranty, I got several emails offering me gifts like an extra battery or attachments for a 5 star review. I did think the product was worth 5 stars but didn’t want to send my home address for such gifts. Plus I knew they weren’t supposed to offer gifts for 5 star reviews - against Amazon and possibly other policy.
The last offer included an option for a $50 Amazon gift card. I didn’t want to pass that up so went through the process far enough to learn the gift card code. I just got off live chat with Amazon to confirm that it was a valid code. Much to my surprise (and possibly the representative) it was legit and is now in my account.
I expressed concern about sellers offering gifts for 5 star reviews and the representative thanked me for my feedback and said they would follow up. Who knows!
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I’ve gotten several emails in the last few week saying my Netflix account is going to be shutdown due to my card not going through. It’s always from some weird email that isn’t Netflix.
My husband just received a letter that he inherited $10M. 
This link has a picture of almost identical letter we received.
And it is obviously a scam!
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There must be a lot of stupid people out there.
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And I just wanted him to take the tops off my water bottles. I had no idea he was a millionaire!
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Not stupid, gullible. Also, not that many, at least percentwise. However, when you have more than three hundred million people, and sending out this stuff is really cheap, you just need to reach the 0.01% most gullible people. That is over 30 thousand people, and imagine that you just squeeze an average of $2,000 out of each, thats $60+ million.
That is why these scams are so obvious - they want to make certain that they have somebody who will be worth their time for Phase #2.
Gullible and stupid is not usually the best combination. the best combination is gullible + above average intelligence + big ego. Smart makes it possible to create arguments to deny obvious reality, and ego works by adding the “I deserve this” and the “I’m too smart to be scammed”.
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This was on the news a week or so ago. Good for those kids for spotting the logo in the corner of the fake photo!!
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Ugh! AI is poisoning everything.
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