I keep the sheriffs fraud # by my phone and give it to the caller to "check" on my PC since they needed it to check into a fraud case. Works great. They hang up really quick and I have a good laugh. Works with the IRS scam calls also.
Had one of those calls once, and I was in full actor mode. Made like I could barely turn the computer on without assistance, asked a bunch of questions, and ate up at least a half hour of the guy's time. When he asked me for my IP address I asked him what that was, though I know full well the IP address is the key to the candy store. Made him talk me through the whole process at least a couple of times, and I could tell he was losing patience. Finally told him I was running a Linux system (which I was, but only on my laptop) and the guy cussed me out in some foreign language.
Unfortunately my mother fell for this damn scam! She’s pretty naive I hate to say it. She totally fell for it. Paid these awful scammers thousands of dollars over at least a 1-2 year period. One good thing about my bum of a brother living at home is that he caught on to what was going on and put a stop to it. My mom didn’t believe him at first either, then I think she didn’t want to admit she got conned. We tried to get the credit card company to reverse the charges and they wouldn’t budge because they said mom willingly gave the scammers her card number and authorized the charges!!!
One day I got the same call every half hour from a telemarketer regarding an alert that my computer has a virus. NOT Since Verizon was my phone carrier, they walked me through how to block this call as it was the same number calling in each time. Ahhhh, no more of THOSE calls.
Usually if I don't recognize a call, I will answer using the company name where I work as it is quite long. I think that confuses the robo software and eventually those calls stop :)
Cherokee, great idea! My solution is I just do not answer the phone to unknown numbers. If they want to leave a message, then I may return the call. If no message, number is blocked. There are other ways to reach me.
Actually, this was very entertaining.
Footnote: He never called me again.
Usually if I don't recognize a call, I will answer using the company name where I work as it is quite long. I think that confuses the robo software and eventually those calls stop :)