Mailing List ecs-isp@2rosenthals.com Message #883
From: "Doug Bissett" <ecs-isp@2rosenthals.com> Full Headers
Undecoded message
Subject: Re: [eCS-ISP] Chinese domain names
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 13:48:08 -0600 (MDT)
To: "eCS ISP Mailing List" <ecs-isp@2rosenthals.com>

You guys don't seem to have enough to do, but a discussion, like this one, is good, every once in a while.

====< Msg #01: Re: [eCS-ISP] Chinese domain names >====
On 2024-09-29, at 21:10:43, Steven Levine wrote:

>In <list-11054057@2rosenthals.com>, on 09/30/24
>   at 11:34 AM, "Peter Moylan" <ecs-isp@2rosenthals.com> said:
>
>Hi Peter,
>
>>Lennie replied "I don't have a computer". (And he doesn't.) The scammer
>>was furious. "You've wasted my time". Lennie just said "I didn't call
>>you, you called me".
>
>Reminds me of a friend of mine who was a Mac guy.  When the Microsoft
>Support guys called, if Greg felt like having fun, he would play along
>with them without telling them he was using a Mac.  Eventually, the
>scammers would get frustrated and give up.

I did that, years ago, using OS/2 (probably eCS, at the time). I wasted about 30 minutes of their time, before they just hung up.

>Steven
>
>
>
====< Msg #02: Re: [eCS-ISP] Chinese domain names >====
On 2024-09-30, at 12:36:59, Ian Manners wrote:

>Meet Lenny, the voice chatbot that can be used against telemarketers and
>phone scammers.
><https://www.kaspersky.com.au/blog/35c3-lenny-voice-chatbot/21894/>
>
>I use to put scammers through to the Lenny phone number,
>I think its been discontinued now.

No surprise there. the scamers probably complained that it was interfering with their business. The "authorities" would find it much easier to shut down Lenny, than to shut down the annoyances.

>Cheers
>Ian
...snip...

====< Msg #03: Re: [eCS-ISP] Chinese domain names >====
On 2024-09-30, at 15:19:12, Peter Moylan wrote:

...snip...

>At times I have toyed with the idea of writing an OS/2 program that
>would pretend to be a Windows remote control program. I've never looked
>up the details of the Windows back door, but I suspect I'd be able to
>take over the scammer's computer. It's always sounded like too big a
>job, though.

You would be caught, and jailed, for doing that.

My current approach, is to simply ignore anything that doesn't seem to be quite right. If they phone me, I say "Hello", and wait to see what they have to say. If it is a scam, or even just spam, I put them on the speaker, and let them waste their time, until they give up, and hang up (don't hang up on them, let them get tired of waiting for a response). I rarely get calls any more. When they ask if it is me, I say "That depends. Who are you, and what do you want?". The last thing that you want to say is "yes" (or anything similar). They can take that, and paste it into a response that says you ordered something from them. If you don't want to wait, do an aside, as if talking to somebody else, and say "have you got this traced yet?". That usually results in an immediate disconnect. After a few of those, you get deleted from the lists.

I have also been blocking phone numbers, but that doesn't seem to be very effective. Recently, I have been getting calls from my own phone number (a sure sign of something...).

E-mail, or text, is simply to be ignored, NEVER respond, in any way.

--
****************************
From Doug Bissett's ArcaOS system
dougb007 AT ocii.com
****************************
... To a cat, "NO!" means "Not while I'm looking."
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