Beware the Phone Scammers
Prince George, B.C. – A Prince George woman is raising the alarm following a phone scam she fears will catch others off guard.
When her phone rang , the woman ( who did not want her name to be used) said she looked at the caller id on her phone before answering “I saw the call was coming from ‘the Province of BC’ so, I answered it, only to have someone telling me my credit card was in jeopardy of being revoked unless I responded by punching this number or that on my phone keypad.” At that point she recognized this was a phone scam and hung up.
She says she worries others will fall for the same phony caller ID and respond by following the recorded message’s instructions.
She has already contacted the P.G. Seniors Centre to warn them about the scam, “They were most receptive”.
This is the latest in a number of phone scams making the circuit. Another popular one claims to be calling from Canada Revenue and threatens all manner of reprisals if the instructions aren’t followed. Residents are reminded that CRA would never make threatening calls, rather, they will contact you in writing. In this latest case, the Province of B.C. would not be calling anyone about a credit card balance.
Comments
Go out and buy a 15 Dollar Answering Machine and the Crooks don’t like to be recorded and they just hang up!
I have received several calls with a variant of this in which they warn that I am about to lose the opportunity to have my credit card interest rate reduced.
I also received a couple of calls from someone claiming to have detected errors in my Microsoft Windows system and wanting me to hire them to fix it remotely. (This was obviously a scam since I run GNU/Linux.)
I had the same microsoft scammer. I kept him on the phone for 15 minutes telling him I was pushing the right buttons and instructed. I then told him that I know more about computer operating systems then anyone in their nest of thieves, that I was happy to waste 15 minutes of his time as it was 15 minutes where I know he failed at his “job” and that he should stand up, walk away from the computer and go get a real job.
Good job. I try to waste their time too but don’t always want to spend a long time myself. Sometimes I just the phone down beside me and ignore it since it can take them a while to realize that I’m not there and it may take some effort for them to hang up.
I do not answer any number I do not recognize that is why I have an answering machine if they want to get a hold of me they leave a message very straight forward and easy to do
don’t forget the all popular hi this is windows or hi this is Microsoft we need to log in to your pc to fix something blah blah blah …..Microsoft does not call people they put their updates online for YOU to download they do not care about their software except when it is being pirated once it leaves the shelf its on you to deal with issues
What happened to the rating buttons?
Wondered about that too.
They were using a free plan for the site that ran the ratings database and they exceeded their mandate. For a little while the other day the buttons were replaced with text that said “free users can only use one button” and stuff like that.
The phony CRA callers are actually collecting a tax, it is called the “stupid tax”.
Love when they phone my dad about his computer problems…. He does not even own one. He just tries to waste at much of their time as ha can. Being retired it can be entertaining for him. LOLOL
That’s awesome, that is the best payback, wasting their time!
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