Rant #4: Phone Phishing Scams
Originally posted: April 3, 2009 (MySpace)
ANNOYANCE LEVEL: 1
Okay... today we're gonna talk about phone scams, cause I just got the second one in a week today, and it's bullshit.
Your
phone rings. The number calling you shows up on Caller ID, so you
think, okay, well, it's probably not a bill collector, or, in my case, I
am expecting a call from a number I don't know today, so naturally, I
answer it.
"Hi, is Jarod available?"
"This is me."
"Great!
I'm calling on behalf of Big Balls In The Mouth Sweepstakes to tell you
you've been selected to win a $15,000 cash prize! This is fabulous
news! But first I need to confirm that you still carry a valid VISA,
Master, or Discover Card and validate that infor-" CLICK.
Normally,
I don't hang up on them, just because I like to waste their time, but
I'm at fucking work right now, working (working = surfing the net
waiting for lunch), and I don't have time for this shit. At least the
one last week called me on my lunch hour.
Anyway, these guys are
fucking ridiculous. It's been a while since I've been plagued with spam
e-mails and phone calls, I generally try to avoid things that result in
that (like signing up for 'free offers' and such, that's generally a
one-way ticket to spam city) but I fucked up about 3 weeks ago and tried
signing up for something that I never even completed, so for about a
week I was anal-pumped with spam until I could get them all
unsubscribed.
Anyway, the spam e-mails have pretty much stopped,
but now I'm getting odd phone calls like the one above. This is the
second one in about 5 days. So let's talk about this bullshit for a
minute.
Do people actually get paid to sit there and call random
numbers all day and go on about this bullshit? I've never in my life
seen a job offer where the description was "Call random numbers and try
to get their credit card info and bank numbers." That's just shit you
don't see in your local classified ads. Where do these people come up
with these jobs?
Also, who the hell is stupid enough to give out
that info anyway? I could understand it better if it was a number YOU
called to ORDER something, but they're calling YOU for the info. Common
sense should set off some sort of bullshit alarm, but apparently these
people get info from other people all the time.
What really
amuses me about it is the fact that I haven't had a credit card in over
10 years, which to me counts as never. The one I got last week, after
asking me to confirm my card info, I said "I've never had any credit
cards." and then the guy had the balls to ask if I had a Debit card "or
anything with a Visa/MasterCard logo on it", which I do, but he doesn't
have to know that. Shit. I can't believe he asked that, and if they're
calling FROM a credit card company like some would have you believe, you
would assume they fucking KNOW you don't have a card with them. How the
hell did they miss that in their system? It's stupid as fuck. It's so
fucking stupid that you could equate it to me going outside with a 20
lb. sledgehammer, pulling my balls out of my pants, placing them on a
log, and smashing them thinking it won't hurt. Yes, it's that fucking
stupid.
You know what, I just had a good idea. Next time one of
those bitches call me, I'm going to fuckin' RickRoll them. Yeah! I'm
sure they have a computer in front of them for processing this info. I
bet I could RickRoll the shit out of them. That's a good idea. Yeah....
To all you scammers that are trying to get my non-existent credit card info:
PS: And prepare to be RickRoll'd! (warning - the link is a RR site - one of the best ones out there, actually :P UPDATE: It doesn't work properly anymore. It used to jump around the screen every second or so making it super difficult to close the page, but alas, it just sits there being boring now, at least on my system)