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It's the same trick as gaining entry to a house by pretending to be from the electric company, or by claiming the tile on the victims roof is looking 'a bit off
by CatsoCatsoCatso 12y ago
It's the same trick as gaining entry to a house by pretending to be from the electric company, or by claiming the tile on the victims roof is looking 'a bit off'. It's just a different medium.
People need to learn that you absolutely must check their identification and credentials. People still get tricked by the old face to face method of pulling this stunt off, and that medium has been around since people have existed.
I don't think it's a problem you'll ever be able to fix, people will always be falling for these simple confidence tricks.
- putzdown 12y agoFair point. Except that for most of the history of the telephone, scams of this kind were prosecuted with immediacy and violence. Somehow they've become just another thing we have to tolerate—but we never tolerated them before. What changed? We've gotten used to spam and malware in the computer age, and the sheer volume and inherit openness of email (for example) makes policing that medium impossible. But the phone companies still have real control over the phone system—it's far less open—and the FCC has responsibility for policing it. You can report scams like this to the FCC, but what's the likelihood they'll follow up? So it's true we've gotten used to being scammed, but it's not true that phone scams are unavoidable.