Once the relatives get wind of this, there is a simple solution. Get a new phone number for the person in question. And even more critical don't cancel the old one.
Put an answering machine on the old one, and have a "safe" relative check it every other day or so. Give the new phone number to family and friends.
After a few weeks of getting nothing but answering machine messages, the scammers will go away.
If the old number has been cancelled, the scammers know you're on to them. And look for the new number. If the old number still works, they won't look for a new number. Mostly.
> Once the relatives get wind of this, there is a simple solution. Get a new phone number for the person in question. And even more critical don't cancel the old one.
Or an even better idea - transfer the number to a reputable VOIP provider and setup the number so that it rejects calls from all numbers except for the ones you specify. Your loved ones can still call but any other scammer would get a busy signal or whatever you specify as the destination. You could even direct unknown calls to you (you can setup a time condition) - and that would give you the ability to add that number to the whitelist if it was a legit caller.
Added benefit - the service will be vastly cheaper.
> If the old number has been cancelled, the scammers know you're on to them.
I can guarantee you that they don't care if you are "on to them". They just stop calling because no one is picking up the line.
My 85 year old grandfather didn't commit suicide, but he was taken for every penny of his meager life savings by the Jamaican lottery scam. My dad discovered what was going on, called the police, but was told there was nothing they could do. My grandfather firmly believed and probably still does that he had won the lottery and was just waiting for a payout. We basically had to revoke his phone privileges to keep him from giving them more money, because he was so convinced. He does't have Alzheimer's or dementia. The scammers are just very convincing.
I really think there is some other maybe even unidentified kind of mental issue going on with this kind of scam. I say that because I know of some people who are locked into the Iraqi dinar scam and simply cannot see what is going on in spite of being otherwise ostensibly smart and intelligent people. Maybe it's "greed" , but it seems to me that it's more of a vulnerability due to hopes and dreams not matching topic sophistication.
My mother is in her late 70s and my father died a couple of years ago, I think just short of his 89th birthday. They grew up in a different world, where a handshake meant something and overnight wealthionnaires who won the lottery or got rich doing something online that many older people cannot fathom or whatever was just not a Thing that was going on.
My dad grew up on a farm, in a log cabin with a dirt floor. He remembered those phones I have only ever seen in black and white movies (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=old+party+line+phone&FOR...). He was able to tell me those phones were a party line, something I had never known. In other words, one phone line serviced the entire town. Anyone with a phone could pick up when it rang and potentially listen in on your call. There was no expectation of privacy.
He just could not keep up with the rate and level of change in his last years. The world had changed too much and he no longer wanted to try to understand. It was just not the world he grew up in.
People also were less likely to be college educated back then. There are ways in which they genuinely lacked the sophistication we just assume people are supposed to have.
My parents were/are very good hearted people and the way the world has changed just does not fit with how they related to it for so much of their lives. This is probably true for a great many other elderly people.
In Indonesia, a particular scam is calling people (esp. parents) very early in the morning, when people are still sleeping, "We're cops. Your son/daughter is arrested for drugs possession. Send us lots of money NOW or we'll send him/her to jail." followed by what sounds like someone crying in the background.
Since you're barely awake, and your son/daughter is indeed away (eg. on night shift or staying with friends), and the fact that some cops are corrupt, and somehow you can't call (busy line) your son/daughter to verify, make people fall prey to this scam.
The interesting part is: how do they know the relationship of the victims, and the location (i.e away from home) at that point in time, considering the scammers are sometimes from different island?
People often post about their families on Facebook. Then the scammers look into the profiles of those family members and look for someone who recently left on a vacation trip or something.
Why would they need to know? The could just call people (of a suitable age? I don't know if Indonesia has an accessibly census + phone database) and hope for a hit.
Here's what I did to stop various scammers calling, I talked to them endlessly. They seem to almost never hang up, they'll just keep going and going. So I was bored one day and decided to see how the scam played out:
They did call again, I picked them up on the fact that it was a scam and asked them how they justify their actions to themselves and ask questions about how the scam works. I'll see how it goes but I seem to have got myself on some kind of blacklist as nobody has called in a month (used to get some kind of scam call at least one a week). It's unfortunate that wasting their time is the most effective defense I can think of.
I once kept a "Microsoft tech support" scammer [1] on the phone for over 30 minutes while I pretended to download and install some bit of malware he was trying to foist on me. When he finally realised what I was doing, I owned-up and politely asked why he was trying to rob me. He gave a loud scream of what sounded like pure frustration and hung up. I was laughing so hard I almost passed-out.
I don't see where you're coming from. This article does a great job of showing some of the impact these scumbags have on one of the most vulnerable segments of our society.
And regarding the guy who committed suicide, don't you dare try to shift blame to his family for not limiting his access to money. Even if it were easy to do, which it isn't, the resentment his caretaker would have to deal with might well have been too much for her to bear, and his wife and family already had enough to bear just watching his mental capabilities fade away. Until you've watched it happen to a parent or spouse, you will not understand what the immediate family has to go through.
The story is just an example of a bad outcome to the scamming. Its a way to personalize the description of whats going on behind the scenes.
Getting older is hard and when Alzheimer and dementia are in the early stages, before clearly identified people are vulnerable. What to do with people that can't make good decisions, or just aren't able to drive anymore.
Clearly keeping them away from firearms and removing financial access is a good idea. Those are hard but necessary discussions.
I get the IRS scam calls on my answering machine from time to time. Anoying. They've switched from the broken english to a computer voice.
The lessons is not to "be wary of scammers" or "hack your phone"... That's totally missing the crux of the scam.
The lesson is that, as you approach old age, and if at all possible, you should give a trusted relative or close friend a durable power of attorney over your finances. In addition, (or as a second best), put your money in an irrevocable living trust assigning yourself as a beneficiary, and laying out strict rules for retrieving money.
The problem is that many senior citizens, especially men, will fight tooth and nail against this. They have a self-image problem. They can not see themselves as frail and vulnerable.
I lived through this with first my grandfather, then my grandmother.
Does anyone know what happens to the people when they get old, so they become gullible? Is there some physiological mechanism, or is it just that older people are less sophisticated about those issues?
As you grow up, you calibrate to the world. My theory is that ability to change your calibration once it's developed is difficult, and probably gets more difficult as you get older. These scams weren't around at this scale, and with this much potential for damage, when older people were growing up. It's probably quite hard to shake the instinct that when someone says they're from the bank on the phone, they probably are.
I'm sure there will be new things that I will be susceptible to in a few decades.
Also, people tend to abandon the old and vulnerable. It's just what happens. They're left alone. If the only voices they hear are the guy on the phone and their internal monologue, with no 'sensible' moderating force, and a potentially unlimited amount of time, it can be very easy for things to get skewed.
I've read some sources that state as adults get older, they lose some of their inhibitions even if they don't suffer from dementia. However, I couldn't find any scholarly papers to back that up. Most of them are specific case studies, not statistical investigations.
What I did find however, is a paper that claims older adults are not more likely to be defrauded than the rest of the population. I'm somewhat skeptical of the claim, but it should be evaluated: http://pps.sagepub.com/content/9/4/427.short
>"targets nearly 300,000 Americans a year, most of them elderly, and has enticed them to send an estimated $300 million annually"
In this case, the scammers took advantage of an elderly man, inflicted with Alzheimer's and diminishing mental capacity. Sad.
But that can't be the case for the majority. How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? I can see, maybe, when the internet was young and this was new. But it's a pop culture joke now. Those numbers are staggering.
I don't understand why Western Union et al aren't being held accountable, at the very least in the form of a class action lawsuit. It seems that either the money transmitters aren't obeying the "Know Your Customer" laws (are they somehow exempt?), or they are knowingly allowing people to be victims of fraud to increase their profit.
Making it much harder to transfer money anonymously seems both helpful in these cases, and lucrative for lawyers.
Western Union is not exempt from KYC requirements. Most agents of it, however, sound something like "the owner of your local bodega." They'll satisfy themselves of your identity, either via personal knowledge or asking to see an ID. They'll then ring up your transfer. The person on the other end of the transfer is "Some person in Jamaica." That doesn't automatically scream FRAUD unless you say "Lottery" -- the overwhelming majority of Americans wiring money to someone in Jamaica are, in fact, supporting family or friends there.
Fraudsters also tend to get pretty decent about instructing their marks to structure payments to avoid the obvious controls, for example by using mules [+] or by striping a $5,000 transfer into multiple smaller transfers on different days to different recipients controlled by the same operation. This is explained to the mark as something like "Oh, different tax bureau than last time" but it's operationally to avoid having velocity checks tripped at WU.
[ + ] Witting or unwitting co-conspirators who receive money in their own name and then forward it to the criminals, often for a cut of the profits.
The first time I tried to send money on moneygram to a real friend in Uganda, I had to jump through many of these hoops, speaking with a real moneygram representative on the phone. How do you know this person? Have you met this person face to face? Why are you sending this person money? It was annoying so I made my answers as vague as possible. He's a friend. Yes I've met the person. It's for sports equipment. They wanted real answers though and kept probing until finally I started explaining the drive from Kampala to the North I would take if I wanted to deliver the money myself and they were like ok you can send. I was sort of hoping to go from the scammed? queue to the whoa maybe terror financier? tier (where the questions are likely more interesting) but that did not happen which is probably for the best.
1. Change the phone number system to require 207 digit phone numbers instead of the current 10 digits.
2. Assign random phone numbers to everybody.
Now the only people who can call you are the people who know you. You have to actively share your number with people. If people call random numbers they will get "not in service" messages all day long.
We have 20 years of experience with NEW communication systems with NEW addressing systems where people can't connect without knowing your email address or IM handle. It can be done, i.e. it is workable to require people to share contact info before you can communicate. People will find a way.
They are not calling "random" numbers. They are buying lead lists from telemarketing firms. I would bet they may even have demographic data on the people they are calling to be sure they are dialing susceptible people (the elderly).
I don't think a solution is a longer phone number. A solution is a better system that provides more security. So you can call someone by their name or other information and that person can simply block everything except for trusted friends and family. Or better yet have government run whitelists so you subscribe to it and if that business does too many shitty things they get axed from the whitelist that is instantly updated to everyone across the country.
What I suggested has many flaws I just don't think extending a current, shitty system is all that useful especially since the majority of these phone numbers are purchased anyway (almost no one dials random numbers to figure out if someone is there, who they are, etc).
My knee-jerk reaction was to balk to a 207 digit number system, but after digesting it, I realized that this isn't a terrible idea. 207 is little much, but longer length numbers in an age where everything can be scanned, pasted, mailed, etc. is actually smart.
Why create a new system? Just move everything on top of IPv6? Not like most of this junk isn't routed over the internet anyways...
With as much address space as is available in IPv6, it shouldn't be hard to create something that points to the person yet is malleable enough to not be easily abuse.
I used to get calls like this on my work phone when I was working as a mechanic. The scammer would tell me to send him money with some sort of green dot card or something. He kept saying once I send it I will be enjoying financial freedom. I don't think they specifically target old people, maybe just people that are more likely to jump at opportunities before they process how ludicrous they are. I was in a blue-collar environment, maybe that was part of it, though I'm not sure how they would have known that.
Well a close relative of mine recently got tricked by a phone scammer who claimed to be from Microsoft. They did the virus alert scam, claiming CRSS.EXE was a virulent virus and needed immediate attention. Hence, they request to connect, using TeamViewer and promptly change his windows account name to a phone number (CALL-XXX-XXX-XXXX) and put a password on it. They immediately disconnect.
Fix, 300+ for two years protection or 400 or so for three years. Needless to say fixing a password locked Windows computer is beyond the majority out there. Apparently its pretty common to declare themselves from Dell, Microsoft, or similar.
The modern day roofers, driveway sealers, and such.
Someone called my grandma when she was still alive and tried to convince her that I was in trouble with some bad people or in jail or something. They were really well researched and convincing. I wasn't in either of those situations. It's insane that people prey on the elderly since it's not like most of them work at all and need the money to live.
Google still takes ads from iYogi. If you call iYogi they will try to scam you, over and over again. This has been going on for years. Has no one complained to Google about this? What about Apple, aren't they concerned about their brand being tarnished over unwitting seniors typing "Apple tech support" into their browsers and running into a tech support scam?
In a documentary, I saw lately (in Europe), one person did not kill himself, but did loss weight and was sent to hospital for inquiry, but nobody did find out what was wrong ... after he died, they found out, that he simply did not have the money to buy food and was so ashamed, that he did not tell anybody.
It was a different scam, where the victims where enrolled in regular lottery gambling (with a monthly rate) and the twist was, that when they found a victim, it was enrolled in more and more games (every game costing maybe $50-100) which where just automatically drawn from his bank account. Even when the victims objected ... the letters where simply not read by anybody.
My father, from whom I'm mostly estranged and who doesn't live in the same country as I, has given over $100K to Nigerian scammers. They hooked him on a Christian dating site. It's incredibly angering to watch all of this.
[+] [-] adekok|10 years ago|reply
Put an answering machine on the old one, and have a "safe" relative check it every other day or so. Give the new phone number to family and friends.
After a few weeks of getting nothing but answering machine messages, the scammers will go away.
If the old number has been cancelled, the scammers know you're on to them. And look for the new number. If the old number still works, they won't look for a new number. Mostly.
[+] [-] nadams|10 years ago|reply
Or an even better idea - transfer the number to a reputable VOIP provider and setup the number so that it rejects calls from all numbers except for the ones you specify. Your loved ones can still call but any other scammer would get a busy signal or whatever you specify as the destination. You could even direct unknown calls to you (you can setup a time condition) - and that would give you the ability to add that number to the whitelist if it was a legit caller.
Added benefit - the service will be vastly cheaper.
> If the old number has been cancelled, the scammers know you're on to them.
I can guarantee you that they don't care if you are "on to them". They just stop calling because no one is picking up the line.
[+] [-] dtolb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patsplat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrubby|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahsd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mz|10 years ago|reply
My dad grew up on a farm, in a log cabin with a dirt floor. He remembered those phones I have only ever seen in black and white movies (http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=old+party+line+phone&FOR...). He was able to tell me those phones were a party line, something I had never known. In other words, one phone line serviced the entire town. Anyone with a phone could pick up when it rang and potentially listen in on your call. There was no expectation of privacy.
He just could not keep up with the rate and level of change in his last years. The world had changed too much and he no longer wanted to try to understand. It was just not the world he grew up in.
People also were less likely to be college educated back then. There are ways in which they genuinely lacked the sophistication we just assume people are supposed to have.
My parents were/are very good hearted people and the way the world has changed just does not fit with how they related to it for so much of their lives. This is probably true for a great many other elderly people.
[+] [-] wiradikusuma|10 years ago|reply
Since you're barely awake, and your son/daughter is indeed away (eg. on night shift or staying with friends), and the fact that some cops are corrupt, and somehow you can't call (busy line) your son/daughter to verify, make people fall prey to this scam.
The interesting part is: how do they know the relationship of the victims, and the location (i.e away from home) at that point in time, considering the scammers are sometimes from different island?
[+] [-] andyjohnson0|10 years ago|reply
Probably they don't. If the victim says "but I don't have a son" they just hang-up. Scattershot approach, not targeted.
[+] [-] saint_fiasco|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daturkel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] new299|10 years ago|reply
http://41j.com/blog/2015/08/phonecall-from-a-scammer/
They did call again, I picked them up on the fact that it was a scam and asked them how they justify their actions to themselves and ask questions about how the scam works. I'll see how it goes but I seem to have got myself on some kind of blacklist as nobody has called in a month (used to get some kind of scam call at least one a week). It's unfortunate that wasting their time is the most effective defense I can think of.
[+] [-] andyjohnson0|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_support_scam
[+] [-] kalleboo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelvin0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tallanvor|10 years ago|reply
And regarding the guy who committed suicide, don't you dare try to shift blame to his family for not limiting his access to money. Even if it were easy to do, which it isn't, the resentment his caretaker would have to deal with might well have been too much for her to bear, and his wife and family already had enough to bear just watching his mental capabilities fade away. Until you've watched it happen to a parent or spouse, you will not understand what the immediate family has to go through.
[+] [-] acomjean|10 years ago|reply
Getting older is hard and when Alzheimer and dementia are in the early stages, before clearly identified people are vulnerable. What to do with people that can't make good decisions, or just aren't able to drive anymore.
Clearly keeping them away from firearms and removing financial access is a good idea. Those are hard but necessary discussions.
I get the IRS scam calls on my answering machine from time to time. Anoying. They've switched from the broken english to a computer voice.
[+] [-] 746F7475|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] murbard2|10 years ago|reply
The lesson is that, as you approach old age, and if at all possible, you should give a trusted relative or close friend a durable power of attorney over your finances. In addition, (or as a second best), put your money in an irrevocable living trust assigning yourself as a beneficiary, and laying out strict rules for retrieving money.
[+] [-] URSpider94|10 years ago|reply
I lived through this with first my grandfather, then my grandmother.
[+] [-] wvenable|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodJobWalrus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afandian|10 years ago|reply
I'm sure there will be new things that I will be susceptible to in a few decades.
Also, people tend to abandon the old and vulnerable. It's just what happens. They're left alone. If the only voices they hear are the guy on the phone and their internal monologue, with no 'sensible' moderating force, and a potentially unlimited amount of time, it can be very easy for things to get skewed.
[+] [-] simonw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] navait|10 years ago|reply
What I did find however, is a paper that claims older adults are not more likely to be defrauded than the rest of the population. I'm somewhat skeptical of the claim, but it should be evaluated: http://pps.sagepub.com/content/9/4/427.short
[+] [-] forgetsusername|10 years ago|reply
In this case, the scammers took advantage of an elderly man, inflicted with Alzheimer's and diminishing mental capacity. Sad.
But that can't be the case for the majority. How on earth do "normal" people fall for this? I can see, maybe, when the internet was young and this was new. But it's a pop culture joke now. Those numbers are staggering.
[+] [-] justinsb|10 years ago|reply
Making it much harder to transfer money anonymously seems both helpful in these cases, and lucrative for lawyers.
[+] [-] patio11|10 years ago|reply
Fraudsters also tend to get pretty decent about instructing their marks to structure payments to avoid the obvious controls, for example by using mules [+] or by striping a $5,000 transfer into multiple smaller transfers on different days to different recipients controlled by the same operation. This is explained to the mark as something like "Oh, different tax bureau than last time" but it's operationally to avoid having velocity checks tripped at WU.
[ + ] Witting or unwitting co-conspirators who receive money in their own name and then forward it to the criminals, often for a cut of the profits.
[+] [-] jefe_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] memracom|10 years ago|reply
1. Change the phone number system to require 207 digit phone numbers instead of the current 10 digits.
2. Assign random phone numbers to everybody.
Now the only people who can call you are the people who know you. You have to actively share your number with people. If people call random numbers they will get "not in service" messages all day long.
We have 20 years of experience with NEW communication systems with NEW addressing systems where people can't connect without knowing your email address or IM handle. It can be done, i.e. it is workable to require people to share contact info before you can communicate. People will find a way.
[+] [-] URSpider94|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BinaryIdiot|10 years ago|reply
What I suggested has many flaws I just don't think extending a current, shitty system is all that useful especially since the majority of these phone numbers are purchased anyway (almost no one dials random numbers to figure out if someone is there, who they are, etc).
[+] [-] noxToken|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wernercd|10 years ago|reply
With as much address space as is available in IPv6, it shouldn't be hard to create something that points to the person yet is malleable enough to not be easily abuse.
[+] [-] CrimsnBlade|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|10 years ago|reply
Fix, 300+ for two years protection or 400 or so for three years. Needless to say fixing a password locked Windows computer is beyond the majority out there. Apparently its pretty common to declare themselves from Dell, Microsoft, or similar.
The modern day roofers, driveway sealers, and such.
on a side note, who do you report these guys too?
[+] [-] slipstream-|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weaksauce|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] triangleman|10 years ago|reply
Google still takes ads from iYogi. If you call iYogi they will try to scam you, over and over again. This has been going on for years. Has no one complained to Google about this? What about Apple, aren't they concerned about their brand being tarnished over unwitting seniors typing "Apple tech support" into their browsers and running into a tech support scam?
[+] [-] PythonicAlpha|10 years ago|reply
It was a different scam, where the victims where enrolled in regular lottery gambling (with a monthly rate) and the twist was, that when they found a victim, it was enrolled in more and more games (every game costing maybe $50-100) which where just automatically drawn from his bank account. Even when the victims objected ... the letters where simply not read by anybody.
[+] [-] gadders|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n72|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b3lvedere|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway227736|10 years ago|reply
I'd like to see these scammers hanged on national TV without hoods over their faces.