@davewil1964 wrote:
I've had several over the last few weeks claiming to be about an Amazon purchase. I don't have an Amazon account. Maybe the scammers know something about how Amazon works. The only criterion I fit of those you listed is elderly, though.
davewil, you’re the savvy type who isn’t likely to be scammed. By anyone. Even if you had a hundred Amazon accounts and the scammers claimed that your account had been fraudulently used to order stuff and they offered you a refund and before they’d even got to the bit about Anydesk.
Just to clarify for everyone reading this thread, the vulnerability criteria used by scammers is not for the “Give this one a try” (cold calling /cold texting / cold emailing) directory, but rather the “confirmed” list they create on their computers with comments about how easy it is to scam person N: weaknesses, blah blah, name of grandchildren, blah blah, trigger words, blah blah, credit card number, blah blah, bank account details, income or pension, days on which income/pension hits their account… because once they’ve identified a mark, they regard that mark as a golden goose. They can go back and re-scam; they can pretend to be an anti-scam government department or police force working to get back the scammed money; they can pass along the details to other scam centres using a different script…
Every part of the goose is wanted. Get the goose’s eggs every single time one is laid… and when there are no more eggs, wring the goose neck, pluck its feathers (pillow filling), roast that goose, render any fat, and don’t let even the gizzard go to waste. That’s the scammer mindset.
