Sick of Scam Calls SMS Emails!

Pumpkin_rrr on 17/08/2018 - 12:37
Last edited 17/08/2018 - 14:10 by 1 other user

We are so sick of these Scammers disrupting our lives day and night, everyday everywhere. It's hard because we have a small business and have to maintain our mobiles and emails. On the verge of declaring war with them.

Most of our friends have stopped their landline service because 99% of the calls are Scams. We still keep ours but wont pick-up calls anymore, so you'd miss out if you call without leaving a message. We hate the way these Scams control our lives but really at our wits end. This includes "Charity" organisations which is exempted from the DoNotCall Register.

This has gone worse in the past 2 weeks. More than 20 SMS and a few calls to our mobiles. I asked the callers where they got my number from and the answer was Unanimous "Survey". The only recent "Survey" I can think of is a Product Review on a Merchant website of an appliance we bought. Thought I was being nice to give a nice review…… But they denied when I asked them.

Have looked at the Scamwatch website, nothing too helpful. Saw WA has a Scamresponse where people can submit scammers numbers. But surely this country would be able to stop this? How did they manage to have names like "Cares4U"?

Found many anti-scam Apps on AppStore but unsure which would be good…..

So Brains Trust, any help please?

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    cwongtech on 19/08/2018 - 17:28

    Probably to pay a fee to release a package from "customs"
    It's the new nigerian prince scam!

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    Magic Mirror on 19/08/2018 - 20:30

    It's a scam that's been running for a while: https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/scammers-targeting-chinese…

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    2ndeffort on 20/08/2018 - 10:15

    Yep get them all the time. last weekend I was skiing and my phone was ringing inside my jacket. Stopped at the side of a run in a real snowstorm (Bull Run at Mt Buller) thinking this call must be important. When i got the phone out, the same chinese thing I've heard before. I dont speak chinese so no idea what it means, just deleted and skied on

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  JayM on 19/08/2018 - 21:54

  I started getting spam calls and SMS after cancelling my Red Cross monthly donation.

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  Hardlyworkin on 19/08/2018 - 23:27

  Whenever I sign up to something online that requires a phone number such as a comparison website I provide the mobile number of someone who deserves to get lots of spam calls. I never use my main Gmail account either.

  I barely ever get any unwanted calls, maybe one every couple of months. My partner gets far more even though her number is only a couple of years old. I think it is from her applying for jobs, especially through agencies.

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  hopper on 20/08/2018 - 09:29

  Domino's and gumtree websites share your contacts

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  mavis30551 on 20/08/2018 - 11:25

  +1

  Spam calls dont bother me in the slightest because my phone is always on silent and half the time I wont pick up for people I know.

  I really feel for business owners who have to be ready to pick it up. Though some quick diligence will show that if its not a mobile or local number, its quite possibly a scammer.
  If they need you they will leave a msg.

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    Pumpkin_rrr on 20/08/2018 - 13:59

    Thanks for your sympathy. It means a lot to me.

    I used to get many calls showing landline numbers or mobile. Being a business phone I had to pick-up. So you can understand my anger when i found out. Eventually it came a point I don't pick up and only answer voice messages.

    To complicate things, doctors and hospitals always show as Private

    So nowadays they choose to send me SMS:-((

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  Gaz1 on 20/08/2018 - 13:50

  I presumed that most of the call centres just dial random (or perhaps sequential) numbers?

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  serin on 20/08/2018 - 15:33

  I'd recommend the app Should I Answer? for your mobile phones. If I see an incoming phone number with too many negative reviews, I will just let it ring till it dies. Writing your own review will actually benefit the whole user community using this app.

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  chachi on 20/08/2018 - 18:41

  I block numbers if I know they're a scam as the numbers look sus. I even got spam calls from so called Telstra NBN as well. Strangely since I've been in Hungary for a few weeks, I've been getting Hungarian emails from women looking for a partner haha which have been coming to my Gmail. Only place I can recall I gave my email to was hertz.hu. Bloody geolocating spammers.

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  coffeerequired on 21/08/2018 - 11:47

  I have a landline for the past 2 years… never even had a phone plugged into it as it was part of a package, I don't even know the number. Recently had to get a handset and it recorded an average of one a day, basically sits in 'do not disturb' mode these days, annoying.

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  tardis3 on 29/08/2018 - 09:08

  Some excellent tips here https://eftm.com/2018/05/stopping-the-spam-callers-on-mobile…

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  steven6 on 08/09/2018 - 22:29

  +1

  I'm so sick of scammers I bait the tech support scammers on my Virtual Machine. The last one I baited was a cold call saying they were the "Microsoft Windows" and my computer was hacked/infected. To find out who they really were I let them on my VM https://youtu.be/q1_GxmI2xQ0 and they were calling from India but the owners reside in Florida, US. I have made a complaint to the IC3 and FTC which are the US authorities as our authorities won't do anything.

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    Pumpkin_rrr on 09/09/2018 - 12:18

    Not good Oz authorities won't do anything, but hope you hear back from US.
    Hopefully these people will go away. Really sick of this now.
    I dont really mind when it is a genuine business Ad, but almost all of them are outright lies and scams. Scumbags!

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      Pumpkin_rrr on 14/09/2018 - 22:31

      +1

      I received a call from “Windows Support”today and remember I forgot to run your YouTube.

      Wow! You are such cool cucumber and I truly hope these scumbags will get the right treatment soon. I am thinking….

      Happy weekend!

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