Why so many scammers?

[Wayne]

Are you all sick of scammers yet? Why must we all deal with these idiots?

Seriously I do not recall a day where I do not get some contact from a scammer. Between my personal life and my business life it is from all directions.

We really need to have some international laws that put this shit to an end. The amount of time and energy wasted by these @#$%@ must be massive.

Lately we get scammers pretending to want to buy products from us. It is always some huge order for something really high priced. Funny thing is they don't sound all that different than some of our industrial orders, so you sort of play along to see if it is real or not. Usually the next email from them will confirm the scam, but time and trouble have been wasted.

Can you feel my frustration? Are we all sick of this shit?

 

[jure]

nowadays I am getting a lot of suspicious phone calls.
my policy is not to answer calls which do not give ID info or are not in my contacts , send them to voicemail ,
if they don't leave a message I block and delete the contact from the recent calls list

 

[Doc J]

Yea, verily!

This really pisses me off!

I even get calls or messages from China at least once per week. I'm like Jure - sure I either don't answer the calls or yell at them in really low-end Chinese—wherever the call comes from.

I'd welcome anything that could put an end to, or at least reduce this crap.

This is a family place,, so I won't use all the terse expletives that I'd like to use.

Suffice it to say: Es mundus excrementi et stercorem pro cerebro habes.

Cheers,

Doc J.

 

[Wayne]

It was bad prior to Covid, but these days it just seems to be insane. They have found so many stupid little methods to steal from people. I hate to say it, but if it is from an electronic method I just assume it is a scammer until proven otherwise. Any form of classified ad these days is almost worthless with so many scammers floating around trying to rip people off.

It used to be a lot of international scammers, but these days I think it is from everywhere, and the COPs around here could care less. Heck, in California you are lucky if the cops will even show up for a robbery. They had a report in the news recently talking about the percentages of crimes that had zero response from the police forces, it was insanely bad, something like 2% response rate in some cities!! These same cities got into trouble as they stopped reporting some crimes like auto theft.

 

[thenated0g]

i was discussing with our fiscal cfo that we may have to go back to in person hand shakes for major deals.

 

[HENNY]

They are every where even in Australia, I agree with Wayne, there must be more that can be done to get rid of them, many are Russian or North Korean based.

 

[rcsoar4fun]

My day job is cybersecurity. In short the scams are everywhere because they work. Maybe 90% of them don't, but 10% pays pretty well. Low risk and low effort.

Some time it is individuals. Other times they are pretty well organized. You can even subscribe to scam platforms as a service. They even have help desks and things. Russia is well know for taking a cut and looking the other way for these groups.

North Korea has government sponsored organizations that help fund the government.

 

[antlerhanger]

I have a 97 year old mother and I have to make sure she doesn't answer the phone .. She is not online so that makes it easier .

Allen

 

[Wayne]

We have a customer in his 90's that visits from time to time. His cell phone rings all the time from scammers and people trying to sell him things. Our customer likes to mess with the scammers and health insurance calls, I personally find the many phone calls super annoying, but I guess it gives him something to do..

p.s. The health insurance calls get a little rude when he finally tells them he is 92. Generally they just hang up at that point.

p.p.s. The customer does this all on speaker phone, so exter annoying for us.

 

[Wayne]

Yes, we have some state sponsored abuses with these scammers, but we also have a ton of it domestically, and well in every corner of the globe now.

Here is a simple solution. When a chain of abuse is coming from a given area, you clamp down on that business/server etc. (This sort of happens now) Abuse continues, then you start closing down things related to their internet/phone connections. Start cutting off entire companies for these abuses and you will see them suddenly start policing their customers. If abuse continues, you keep increasing the size of the net. If North Korea, India and Russia want to play the game, then you kick the country off the internet and see how long they want to play that game.

I know it is not that easy, but I'd bet something like this could be put into place.

 

[HENNY]

We have a customer in his 90's that visits from time to time. His cell phone rings all the time from scammers and people trying to sell him things. Our customer likes to mess with the scammers and health insurance calls, I personally find the many phone calls super annoying, but I guess it gives him something to do..

p.s. The health insurance calls get a little rude when he finally tells them he is 92. Generally they just hang up at that point.

p.p.s. The customer does this all on speaker phone, so exter annoying for us.

Just keep blocking the numbers, eventually the calls stop.

 

[Wayne]

If you aren't in my contacts you go straight to voicemail. That weeds out most of the spam calls.

 

[HappyRCFlyer]

Right now the best we have for buying and selling online is E-bay and Amazon. Their process is pretty extensive and spendy too, but it's the best we have along the gambit for the classifieds these days. It used to be newspaper ads or other print media before the digital realm, that too was a lot of filtering to make sure what they are posting is legit.

The robocalls are out of control though, something must be done to stop that from continuing on all accounts globally, that would take a complete restructuring along how phone calls are made perhaps, but it would put an end to that until they figure out another work around, around that.

The energy they put into crime if applied towards constructive use would be vastly more lucrative for them in the long run anyway.

I and everybody except the scammers feel your pain.

 

[Wayne]

I get no robocalls with the built in spam blocker on the Iphone. They occasionally leave a voicemail, but that is getting pretty rare too.

Amazon and Ebay are not without scammers. I was scammed buying a vintage transmitter on Ebay a while back. Amazon has a pretty long history of scammy sellers. True they get filtered out quick, but it is still a real risk. And if you do not alert those places quickly, you are out the money. Very few safe methods.

I have a guy that is pretending to want 40,000 props right now. It's a scammer. My default is scammer until proven otherwise.

 

[thenated0g]

My Google Pixel has been pretty great with with robocalls. If they do get thru i use its built in "phone assistant" that asks them what they want and messages me when they answer.

 

[HappyRCFlyer]

I get no robocalls with the built in spam blocker on the Iphone. They occasionally leave a voicemail, but that is getting pretty rare too.

Amazon and Ebay are not without scammers. I was scammed buying a vintage transmitter on Ebay a while back. Amazon has a pretty long history of scammy sellers. True they get filtered out quick, but it is still a real risk. And if you do not alert those places quickly, you are out the money. Very few safe methods.

I have a guy that is pretending to want 40,000 props right now. It's a scammer. My default is scammer until proven otherwise.

Nothing is risk free, but at least you can see the sellers history, ratings, and feedback and at the very least, post a negative review to warn others. I do have spam filters in place on my Android phone, the shere volume though makes mine a target since they all think I'm rich. They are getting my number from my espressooutfitters.com web site. Sometimes I'll dig into finding their web site and report them to their host to have that shut down, that can be effective with them for I make it clear to them that I was the one that lead to them being shut down. You do a Whois with their web site which in turn points to their host to make the complaints.

I could use better exposure on the happyrcflyer kit lines so I don't have to rely upon E-bay with their fee's and hassle, so spots like your classifieds are certainly helpful, even to you since the balsa is all coming from you, so people are indirectly still purchasing from you.

 

[Doc J]

I heard The Donald has put a tariff on scammers.

Doc.

 

[HENNY]

I heard The Donald has put a tariff on scammers.

Doc.

Thats going to make a lot of money.