by Bill Cunningham
It’s Not a Panto and Not Really a Laugh
Though we may no longer attend a pantomime as our standard seasonal entertainment we may still recall our participation in them. Let’s use our experience of then to respond to scam-mers who approach us.
On the phoned approach to us they will firstly state who they are, and then what they can do for our financial benefit. Alternatively they may take the other tack and warn us that we are in serious trouble unless….
Either way we respond the same, from our past experiences with “Oh no you’re not!”
To ….I’m from BT and your broadband is down , but I can help you …..”oh no you’re not!”
To ….I’m from the tax office and I’m sorry to inform you that you owe us £842.37 and un-less you pay now then we will have no option but to call in the police … It’s again “Oh no you’re not”
Or … “HMRC here and it’s your lucky day for we have overcharged you. All we need is your banking details so we can send you some mon-ey back”
A serious game where it’s us who decide on the rules we play by.
I’m from Microsoft and we’ve noticed a prob-lem with ….. “Oh no you’re not”
“There’s a parcel we have here at the Post Of-fice and unfortunately there’s another £2.95 to pay on it before we can deliver. So if you can now pay me over the phone. “
And if we fall for that one then shortly after-wards we get a call from our bank to say “we’ve noticed that you’ve just paid a scam-mer and now he has all your banking details. Let’s immediately get all your remaining mon-ey into a new safe account and..”
So – believing these calls is a lot more danger-ous than believing in fairies. From a stranger, out of the blue, to help us to become rich or threaten with legal action is a SCAM.