by Jack
The caller ID said. “Connective Therm, 609-572-7239,” I suspected it was a robocall and I was right, but with a twist, it was a fraud call.
The recorded voice said in perfect English, “Your Amazon account has a suspicious purchase of an iPhone for $1009.87, to dispute this charge press 1 now.”
So, I pressed 1 and the recording repeated and so I tried it again. This time I was switched to a male (probably in Pakistan) with a thick accent and a lot of background noise that sounded like numerous other operators taking calls. This was obviously a phishing (scam) call where the “Amazon guy needs to verify your account information.” If you are an idiot you will give it to him.
It is the season for scams and it will only get worse until Christmas. So never provide any identification or account information to anyone who calls you! DON’T DO IT. If you must, look up the Amazon (any company) number yourself and call them.
That phone number is a landline Verizon phone in New Jersey. Would suggest you contact Verizon and let them know – because they DO want to know when their phone numbers are being used in a scam!
If you ever want to look up that stuff online, go to http://www.whitepages.com. You can find out if it’s a cell or landline, and which phone company it’s from. If you want to pay, you can do so and get further info about your caller.
Thanks JS I will do that.
I didn’t have much luck with Verizon, guess they are inundated with calls like mine, but I did find help at AARP who took my information and have a connection to the FBI internet fraud line. Of course, you can call the FBI line too, but you just get a form to fill out, and then the info you provide is lost in cyberspace and you will never hear another thing. I’ve done this three or four times and quite frankly you have zero chance of anything ever being done about it.
Most of the cyber scammers operate in places where we can reach them with law enforcement. They steal billions every year from ignorant or mentally compromised Americans and apparently, this doesn’t warrant sending a kill team in after these criminals. I think it may be possible to do government-sanctioned terminations in the Philipines, they currently do it with drug dealers. However, we don’t cooperate with the very reasonable Duarte regime, so we won’t be killing the internet pirates there either. Let me be perfectly clear now, yes, I am absolutely 100% in favor of using extreme violence against massive criminal enterprises that prey on the elderly in America and often time loot them out of their last penny.
Do you think I’m wrong for feeling this way?