NZ Skeptics Articles

Articles tagged with "scammers"

Secrets and Lies

21 August 2023

Over the last week or so I've been approached online by two scammers and, I guess because of the amount of free time I have now that I'm not attending Eastern Lightning fellowship meetings, I decided to play ball with both of them and see where the scam leads. Neither has reached the point yet where I've been asked to give them my money, but in both cases it didn't take long to see where the con would eventually come. Once we get to that point, which is likely to be in the next day or two for both, I will have a couple of fun articles to write - I've already been meticulously copy/pasting all of my chat sessions with the scammers in documents, so that I have a record of everything that goes on. As a taster, here's a fun preview of one of the incidental conversations I had with a “Customer Care” representative for a company I'm now apparently working for:

Fake Norton Email Scam

5 December 2022

Recently I received an email that purported to be from the anti-virus company Norton that was blatantly a scam, but I decided to follow through as much as I could to see what the scammers were trying to do. There's often a side effect of doing this, which is that I can waste the time of the scammers - the more time they're on the phone to me, the less time they'll have for scamming people who are at risk of falling for the scam. Plus maybe, just maybe, the scammers will start to question their career choice if many of their potential marks end up making their life a frustrating misery. Below is a series of events that, all in, might have taken about an hour from start to end.

Scammers being scammed

1 August 2022

Online news outlet Vice reported recently about a growing problem of witches, psychics and tarot card readers having their online profiles copied as a way to steal their business. I also found an episode of the “Your Magic” podcast where host Michelle Tea talks with Sarah Potter, Sabrina Scott and others about the problem:

Anatomy of an Indian Phone Scam

23 May 2022

I watched a great video on YouTube the other day, the latest in a series of videos by Mark Rober where he uses glitter bombs to surprise scammers. His project started off using a device that targets people who steal packages from people's porches. A fake package was built that would activate when opened, with a glitter throwing disc, a mechanism to press down on a fart spray nozzle, and cameras to record and upload thieves' reactions when they opened the packages in their homes or cars.

International Grants online

25 April 2022

A friend (Gaylene Middleton from the New Zealand Humanists) contacted me on the weekend as she had been messaged by one of her Facebook friends about a Government Grants assistance program she is apparently eligible to receive funds from. She immediately looked up the name of the program - Federal Grant For Family Home And Care Support (FGHS) - and found an article warning that it was a scam, and then she messaged me to double check and because she thought I may be interested in it. Here are the messages she received from her FB friend, which she passed on to me (apologies for the really bad grammar):