Funny!

David E. Ross wrote:

On 1/28/2014 9:37 AM, XS11E wrote:

The inside of the "I'm calling you from Windows Support" scam:

http://www.howtogeek.com/180514/the-...port%e2%80%9d-
scammers-called-htg-so-we-had-fun-with-them/

or: http://preview.tinyurl.com/opzhady

All this reminds me of my new tactic in dealing with telemarketers.

Me: Hello.

Them: Is David Ross there?

Me: Who is calling?

Them: [some building contractor, credit repair service, "free trip" to
hear a time-share sales pitch, etc]

Me: Oh! This is a very bad time. David died this week. We are in the
middle of holding a wake.
or
Me: Oh! I'm David's brother. He died yesterday. I am in the middle
of planning his funeral.

My wife does not think this is funny at all, but I enjoy every second of
this. However, this does not work with robocalls.

My preferred opening involves just saying "Hello" and not repeating myself.
Some (older?) autodiallers wait for that second "HellO" before connecting to
a wage slave.

Plus, anyone calling my home number asking for me is automatically told I
don't live here. (Anyone I care to speak with has my cell number; house line
is "just in case".)

--
What is justice? Two forces collide.
Each may have the right in his own sphere.

Ken Blake wrote:

You could be right, of course, but if it were me, I'd worry too
much about the other possibilities, so I'd do a clean
reinstallation and change all my passwords. That's my standard
advice.

Much easier to do it my way, just hang up the phone when they call!

--
XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

Ron wrote:

From the article...."The next guy on the chain who was much
easier to understand proceeded to get me to type in a URL into my
preferred browser (yes, he asked me which browser I prefer),
spelling out a tinyurl.com short URL character by character, and
then asked me to read it back to him."

I see, I totally missed that!



--
XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

VanguardLH wrote:

In the article, the scammer refers to URL that he has his dupe
visit. That's the TinyURL that I was talking about. That one the
author should have reported to TinyURL.

Right, I missed that!


--
XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

On Wed, 29 Jan 2014 07:08:42 -0700, XS11E
wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:

You could be right, of course, but if it were me, I'd worry too
much about the other possibilities, so I'd do a clean
reinstallation and change all my passwords. That's my standard
advice.

Much easier to do it my way, just hang up the phone when they call!


Of course! If I didn't make it clear, my advice is for those who let
them into their computers.

On Wed, 29 Jan 2014 07:11:51 +0000 (UTC), "Auric__"
wrote:

David E. Ross wrote:

On 1/28/2014 9:37 AM, XS11E wrote:

The inside of the "I'm calling you from Windows Support" scam:

http://www.howtogeek.com/180514/the-...port%e2%80%9d-
scammers-called-htg-so-we-had-fun-with-them/

or: http://preview.tinyurl.com/opzhady

All this reminds me of my new tactic in dealing with telemarketers.

Me: Hello.

Them: Is David Ross there?

Me: Who is calling?

Them: [some building contractor, credit repair service, "free trip" to
hear a time-share sales pitch, etc]

Me: Oh! This is a very bad time. David died this week. We are in the
middle of holding a wake.
or
Me: Oh! I'm David's brother. He died yesterday. I am in the middle
of planning his funeral.


Reminds of a slight friend I had many years ago. His last name was
Abcde (I don't actually remember what it was, but that will do for
this story.) When he wanted to be listed in the phone book as Edcba,
he was told that's not the way you spell "Abcde."


He replied "it's my name and I can spell it any way I want to"! After
a bout of argument, he won and got it listed backwards.

From then on, any time he got a phone call from someone who asked for
Mr Edcba, his reply was much like what you describe above.

XS11E wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:

You could be right, of course, but if it were me, I'd worry too
much about the other possibilities, so I'd do a clean
reinstallation and change all my passwords. That's my standard
advice.

Much easier to do it my way, just hang up the phone when they call!


You'd be surprised just how true this is.

One day I get called by a telemarketer who is "doing a survey".
So I joke along, giving jokey responses like "yes, I'd prefer
your Yugo to that other guy's Jaguar" and the like. In other
words, just screwing up their survey.

Well, back at the telemarketers, a little tick box was
set. It says "guy likes to do surveys". My telephone number
is then sold to other telemarketers. Suddenly my call
rate goes up, and I'm getting surveys for "bone china",
"travel destinations", you name it. Any telemarketer that
gets paid to do phone surveys, suddenly I;m on their
radar as a victim.

My advice is, don't give them *any* tangible information
to work with. The only box they should be ticking on
their form is "guy likes to swear and yell at telemarketers" :-)

Paul

On Wed, 29 Jan 2014 07:11:51 +0000 (UTC), "Auric__"
wrote:

[snip]

My preferred opening involves just saying "Hello" and not repeating myself.
Some (older?) autodiallers wait for that second "HellO" before connecting to
a wage slave.

My preferred opening is "Good morning/afternoon/evening" as the
case may be. I have done this for many years. I was not intending to
confuse robocallers, but it appears that it does this. I am fine with
that.

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On 01/29/2014 09:18 AM, Ken Blake wrote:



Reminds of a slight friend I had many years ago. His last name was
Abcde (I don't actually remember what it was, but that will do for
this story.) When he wanted to be listed in the phone book as Edcba,
he was told that's not the way you spell "Abcde."


He replied "it's my name and I can spell it any way I want to"! After
a bout of argument, he won and got it listed backwards.

From then on, any time he got a phone call from someone who asked for
Mr Edcba, his reply was much like what you describe above.




Years ago, before people had cell phones, you could pay extra for an
unlisted number.

It turns out the the phone company really did not care how you listed
your name, just as long as you paid the bill.


Here are two names I recall being used by friends:


Hugh Betcha


Humphrey Bogus

"philo " wrote in message
...
On 01/29/2014 09:18 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
Years ago, before people had cell phones, you could pay extra for an
unlisted number.

It turns out the the phone company really did not care how you listed your
name, just as long as you paid the bill.


Here are two names I recall being used by friends:


Hugh Betcha


Humphrey Bogus

In the Oxford phone book in the late 1970s there was someone who rejoiced in
the name Butterfly Burps (or maybe it was Burps Butterfly). Weird.

The best was an entry in our phonebook at work. Our sites were identified by
the first three letters of the town followed by two digits to denote the
building within that town. Job descriptions were weird acronyms that didn't
mean much to anyone. And so we got (in "name / job description / site"
order):

O MacDonald / Ada Fm / EIE10

On 01/30/2014 10:55 AM, NY wrote:
"X

In the Oxford phone book in the late 1970s there was someone who
rejoiced in the name Butterfly Burps (or maybe it was Burps Butterfly).
Weird.

The best was an entry in our phonebook at work. Our sites were
identified by the first three letters of the town followed by two digits
to denote the building within that town. Job descriptions were weird
acronyms that didn't mean much to anyone. And so we got (in "name / job
description / site" order):

O MacDonald / Ada Fm / EIE10



LOL

I don't think anyone could top that !

On Thu, 30 Jan 2014 10:46:32 -0600, philo* wrote:

On 01/29/2014 09:18 AM, Ken Blake wrote:



Reminds of a slight friend I had many years ago. His last name was
Abcde (I don't actually remember what it was, but that will do for
this story.) When he wanted to be listed in the phone book as Edcba,
he was told that's not the way you spell "Abcde."


He replied "it's my name and I can spell it any way I want to"! After
a bout of argument, he won and got it listed backwards.

From then on, any time he got a phone call from someone who asked for
Mr Edcba, his reply was much like what you describe above.




Years ago, before people had cell phones, you could pay extra for an
unlisted number.


Yes, I neglected to add that he was cheap, and the reason he spelled
his name backward was that he effectively got an unlisted number for
free that way.

I have an unlisted number, not because I wanted one, but because I
have a VoIP number.

On 1/30/2014 8:46 AM, philo wrote:
On 01/29/2014 09:18 AM, Ken Blake wrote:



Reminds of a slight friend I had many years ago. His last name was
Abcde (I don't actually remember what it was, but that will do for
this story.) When he wanted to be listed in the phone book as Edcba,
he was told that's not the way you spell "Abcde."


He replied "it's my name and I can spell it any way I want to"! After
a bout of argument, he won and got it listed backwards.

From then on, any time he got a phone call from someone who asked for
Mr Edcba, his reply was much like what you describe above.




Years ago, before people had cell phones, you could pay extra for an
unlisted number.

It turns out the the phone company really did not care how you listed
your name, just as long as you paid the bill.


Here are two names I recall being used by friends:


Hugh Betcha


Humphrey Bogus



The local phone company (Pacific Telephone, now AT&T) did not charge
extra to delete my house number from my listing. Since there were
always several David Ross listings, I had sufficient anonymity without
paying for an unlisted phone number.

--
David E. Ross
http://www.rossde.com/

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