I don\u2019t usu\u00adally get a lot of phone scams on my office phone, prob\u00adably because it\u2019s unlis\u00adted. But I did get one today. Being April Fools\u2019 Day, I was\u00adn\u2019t sure wheth\u00ader it was a prank or a scam; after hunt\u00ading around a bit on the web I think the latter.<\/p>\n
It was a brief call, an auto\u00admated sys\u00adtem claim\u00ading to be from Visa, say\u00ading they had a charge for $1000 for per\u00adfume \u201cfor my stinky armpit\u201d (no joke, that\u2019s what they called it). The auto\u00admated voice told me to press 8 to accept the charge, or 9 to decline it. I hung up instead (I\u2019ve had real calls from my bank about unau\u00adthor\u00adized charges, so I know what they sound like). Hunt\u00ading around on the web showed a bunch of people claim\u00ading that press\u00ading 9 allows the per\u00adson to make long dis\u00adtance calls from your num\u00adber some\u00adhow; Snopes says that\u2019s only par\u00adtially true<\/a>. Oth\u00ader people also say the dial 9 scam isn\u2019t a scam<\/a>, although the lat\u00adter link points out \u201csome com\u00adpan\u00adies have indeed used decept\u00adive prac\u00adtices to trick recip\u00adi\u00adents into mak\u00ading premi\u00adum rate calls\u201d, which could add up, I guess. Seems like a lot of effort to go to for little reward \u2014 maybe it was an elab\u00ador\u00adate April Fools\u2019 Day joke after all. Any\u00adone want to \u2018fess up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t usu\u00adally get a lot of phone scams on my office phone, prob\u00adably because it\u2019s unlis\u00adted. But I did get one today. Being April Fools\u2019 Day, I was\u00adn\u2019t sure wheth\u00ader it was a prank or a scam; after hunt\u00ading around a bit on the web I think the lat\u00adter. It was a brief call, \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cPhone Scams\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-phone-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}