Why do scam artists (actually that’s an insult to real artists, sorry Vincent, Renè, Michelangelo, Pablo, Salvador et al) think that anyone over 70 is as dumb as Trump, and you’d need to get close to the bottom of the IQ ladder before you’d find a candidate, and an easy mark for a grifter.
Five years ago it was mainly our landlines that had the trolls jiggling in excitement when they called on behalf of: “your bank”; “your computer security company”; “your Sky account”; or whatever company they claimed to be.
My initial reaction was to accuse them of lying and put the phone down.
The trouble is that did not deter them. They continued to use a range of different numbers in the hope that I would not notice the same person was calling from so many accounts.
I did go to the well-tried move of engaging them in conversation:
“Ah yes, didn’t you call yesterday? Good to hear from you again. Sorry I cut the call short but I was concerned about my mother who is 92 and bedridden. How is your mother by the way?”
This would put some of them off, but there were the persistent ones who would change tack and start telling you that with an elderly person in the house you needed to ensure your cyber safety, as if you were scammed you might end up unable to provide care for them.
Anyone who tries that just gets cut off.
The problem is that some of the scammers just can’t stop. This used to put me on the “shaming” tack.
“Does your mother know what you do for a living? Does she know that you try and con elderly people to pay over all their savings just so that you can live the high life?”
Surprisingly this does turn some of them away. I have had an occasional one even say sorry but most of them get narked and tell me to do things to myself that I have not been able to do in 20 years before cutting the call.
Eventually they appeared to have realised they were not going to con me out of my hard-earned savings and the phone calls slowed to a trickle and then just stopped.
Then they tried a new tack. An email, which was allegedly from my Internet provider; or my bank; or my McAfee security.
Over the past couple of years these emails have increased from one every now again to two or three a week; then to every day; and now three or four a day.
The thing is all you have to do is to put your marker on the word details and will reveal who sent the email. Normally it will have a name and what is also a company name.
These are not necessarily cyber thieves, they just want you to open the email which takes you to their email site and gives them a click on their site.
It might make it difficult for you to leave the site unless you shut down completely.
The scammer only succeeds if the recipient opens the email.
Do not open the email.
Robin's Nest 