90% of the time, I just hang up.
9% of the time, I pick up and say nothing. A human being would of course say “Hello?” but the robots just stay on the line waiting for something to happen.
Once in a blue moon, when I get a human being, I will ask her “What’s my name? My bank (or car dealership, or Amazon) will surely know if they are calling me.” That leads to a hang up or profanities.
I always answer because we get calls from out of the blue for H’s business or inquiries about ponies.
When it’s spam I let them drone on until they hang up. Perhaps it’s slowing down a call to someone else.
My “favorite” idiot is from some “police” charity where the opening line after I say hello is, “Is the man of the house there?” It’s a human speaking. Pending my mood I either “play” with him or just let him drone on by himself until he gives up. I’ve had that one three times in the past. That “man of the house” need he has is memorable for those of us barefoot ladies in the kitchen.
ETA: And this barefoot lady in the kitchen also controls our family budget and 100% of our charitable giving. If H sees a need he cares about, he runs it by me, not the other way around.
When I checked on my bank account today, there was a debit from an ATM in DC. This was in the thousands. When I spoke to someone in the fraud department, I questioned how this could happen. I don’t understand how someone can go so far over the allowed limit.
I got an email from the IRS on Saturday saying someone had tried to log on to ‘my’ account and after 3 attempts had been blocked. It said if this wasn’t me, I should try to log on after 24 hour block was removed and check on activity and change my password.
Well I tried to log on and said I didn’t remember password. It said it would send me a password but never did. I think the email was real because it said not to reply and there was no way for me to get to the IRS website from the email.
I don’t know if it is a system problem because when I did try to log on to the site, it said the site had been down all day for maintenance or repair or something.
scam alert.
my 80 yr old dad. Someone has his name and potentially his SS number. they filed for covid unemployment benefits in a state far away from us. He’s never lived there. I’m glad the person didnt get any benefits, but that state sent out a letter mentioning the benefits and etc for the program as he has an account with them. Not much to do about it; but now we know he is on someone’s radar.
Happened with H but where we are in CO
You might think about freezing his credit. I doubt he’s going to be trying to take out any loans, new credit cards, etc.
In colorado more than half the claims were fraudulent. My brother got all the paperwork to ‘complete’ his application. Joke was on the fraudsters - my brother doesn’t work and there was nothing to claim! A friend got a call from his HR department saying they got paperwork from the state to confirm he’d left the firm. NOPE, was still working. The HR department said they received claims for several employees all who were still employed.
I couldn’t really understand how the fraud worked because my brother got the debit card in his paperwork too. If the fraud had gone through, how would the people get the money if brother had the debit card? I think the debit card and all the paperwork came from the state, so don’t think the thieves had a duplicate card. We just couldn’t figure out why people were filing for (fraudulent) payments when if they were processed, they would have gone on the debit card and my brother had the card.
I also got a letter last year about an unemployment claim that I did not make. That state had an online “I didn’t make this claim” page.
I did collect some unemployment from another state. They automatically sent a debit card that never had any $ because I had set up direct deposit. I heard fraudulent claims were being sent to online bank accounts.
Had you ever set up an account at the IRS? If not then perhaps someone tried to do so in your name, although some pieces don’t make sense like why they’d use your email instead of one they owned. You might want to post this on the “Personal Finance” Boglehead forum for financial advice and see what people think. Forum is at US Investors - Bogleheads.org
I’m sure I have had an IRS account, and I think it was to set up my FSA ID when I was filing FAFSA for my kids. When I tried to log on, it did look like something I’d do (a picture comes up with a ‘caption’ and it looked like me). When I then entered my email (the one they used to send the notice) and asked for a password reset code, nothing happened.
At first I thought it was SSA and was more concerned that someone was trying to mess with my benefits (redirect payments so something) but I’m now thinking this was just a huge hacker trying different codes or an IRS computer system error (because of the system being down the entire next day).
I was recently hacked on FB and have changed a lot of passwords, but I’m pretty careful about not using my SSN on anything but govt sites when absolutely required.
We get multiple calls a day about ‘free’ cardiac genetic testing through Medicare. I’ve asked them to stop to no avail.
We switched our landline to VOIP (I keep it mostly so I don’t have to give my cell# to people/companies that I don’t want to have it) and we pay only for the taxes—- about $6/mo. WHen I get a junk call I block it. two days ago we got ELEVEN calls. Cant imagine what will happen when the political calls start too! Ugh!
I keep getting emails confirming fake paypal payments- coinbase, macAfee, etc., all designed to have me contact them.
New one I’ve got several times in the past few days–
“We’re calling from the legal department about suspicious activity on your account.”
Nice and specific. I’m so tempted to press 1 and get their actual spiel.
Don’t engage. Although chances of this are tiny, your voice can be recorded and used to unlock accounts that use voice recognition (Fidelity offers such security option…
I don’t. If nothing else it tells them this is a working number. But I AM tempted.
I wish I didn’t have to answer “Spam Risk” calls (per my cell phone’s caller ID), but my son is overseas and sometimes his calls get labelled that way, e.g., when he was in Kabul a few weeks ago
True—you could be asked if “XX” is your name and your response of “yes” could be recorded and used to pretend you approved all kinds of things.
I picked one up the other day for kicks and giggles. Apparently my car warranty has expired. When I picked up, they asked me for the make, model and year of my car. I kept insisting to them that since they called me to tell me the warranty had expired, they must have that information. Then they told me that for security purposes, they needed me to confirm that information. I told them that since they reached out to me, it was more appropriate for them to provide me with that information.
For some reason they didn’t agree, and they hung up.
Got an email today asking me to click on a link to verify my Chase account. Don’t have any Chase accounts. The email of the sender showed up as …k12.wv.us. So it came from a West Virginia school system–either they’ve been hacked, so some kid got bored in study hall…