Glutton for Scams

Part of the wonderful world of IT is getting phone calls at all hours of the day and night for whatever may be broken … I say may, because oftentimes the error lies between the keyboard and the chair.

If you listened to my voicemail from the last few months, you’d think I was a fugitive on the run. The “IRS”, “Apple”, and my “student loans” are all going to send me to jail.

It all started with the IRS. Last fall, I would get a voicemail every single day (because I tend not to answer calls from Idaho, New Mexico, or Vermont) from an automated voice stating that the IRS wants to help me help myself. Apparently I have a court date scheduled before the judge magistrate (of what, I don’t know) to determine my suitability to be tried before a grand jury (for what, they didn’t say).

Needless to say, I did not press one to get assistance, nor did I return the call.

After a month or so of peace and quiet, Valentine’s Day brought a new onslaught of voicemails from “Debbie” my student loan servicer. She was trying to get my payments under control because of recent changes that I needed to be aware of.

Needless to say, I did not return her call because I’ve never had a student loan.

True panic ensued this week from the next robotic voice to grace my telephone number. Wouldn’t you know, my iPhone has been BREACHED and I need to call Apple back immediately so they can help me avoid jail time for what I’ve done.

Needless to say …

I perish to think that this crazy stuff actually works on people, until I got a call recently from a somewhat elderly client who verbally abused me because Microsoft called him to clean up the mess on his computer. It was full of viruses, malware, and other unfortunate things and if they didn’t take care of it immediately and charge him a cleanup fee, they would have been forced to delete his entire email history.

Needless to say, I had a hard talk with my elderly client and his blind trust in the scary voice on the other end of the phone.