Spam and Scam

[Kurt Zisa]

What are some of the worst spam emails or scam calls have you had to deal with?

Nearly every day for the past few months I get emails about viagra from some obviously fake pharmacy websites, some even claiming to be "Canada's best online pharmacy". A: I've never bought or touched viagra, B: I would never by drugs or medcine online, escpecially from such dodgy and made up sites, and C: I don't live anywhere near Canada.

And a while back I'd get 'courtesy calls' every Thursday from some made up business like Niagra Healthcare. I don't really know what they were expecting to get out of me if I'm 100% sure I've never bought or heard of their company.

So what spam or scams have you had to deal with? Do you know anyone who's been scammed in the past?

[Xanatos]

Strangely enough I never received a spam mail in my entire life, not even from a Nigerian prince, and I have a hotmail account since ever.

My parents however often get a call saying they won some random item or two, they just have to pay for the shipping, thing is the shipping itself cost way more than that item they apparently won.

[loaf]

Use a spam filter.

[Rocky]

oh man this is a funny topic, and something like this just happened to me last week too.

I get a phone call from a restricted number while I got home from work. Thinking it could be something to do with work, I answered it. It was a guy with a thick Indian accent by the name of "Alex," and he was saying that my computer was not responding to Windows Updates. Considering I work with computers and stuff a living, I told him he was wrong and explained why, while he just kept talking, much like he was reading off a script. I kept explaining why he was wrong, and he hung up on me.

Later in the week when I was talking to my mom, she got the exact same call and everything! Pretty strange indeed, but she thought the Alex dude was talking about her windows at home, not like the windows computer. xD

[Alpha]

I never used to get spam until about a year ago when I left my PC and my friends signed me up on some dodgy gay porn site. Now I periodically getting bad phishing emails.

I think spam emails are meant to be kind of but not too dumb. They want to make sure anyone who is too smart to get tricked deletes them immediately and the rest reply. It's like a reverse spam filter in which only people dumb enough to be tricked by spam actually reply to the spam.

[octoberpumpkin]

Too much spam, had to make a new email address. Usually the spam I get is from fake job offers

[hTop]

We got a phone call to our home landline about a week ago.

From a guy claiming to work for Microsoft. He said their records showed that we needed to update our OS and we'd need to follow the steps he was gonna give us.

Luckily, I'm fairly computer literate so I immediately knew this was nonsense. Googled the phone number and it turns out loadsa people had been succesfully scammed and installed a keylogger or something on their computer.

[DragonHeart]

I've been job hunting lately. Omg, the number of phone calls and emails I'm getting from marketing companies is horrendous. I had to start auto-rejecting calls because they'd be calling me 5 or 6 times a day. :/ Fortunately it looks like the main culprit has given up for now, but damn that's frustrating.

[Unknown Entity]

I received an email to my junk folder this week about being qualified for joining an online casino. As boring as it gets.

Why can't I get spam emails about viagra or ones from a Nigerian Prince, just to spice it up a bit? ._.

[Clint]

People still use e-mail? What year is it, 2002? And I don't get scam calls because I don't answer my phone. If you want to get in touch with me, send me a notarized letter in the mail. If it ain't notarized, it's not an official document, and I don't look at it.

[Lily]

I get those Viagra ones all the time about my supposed erectile dysfunction, im not even a boy ):<