My long lost son
I was chatting with Herself the other night.
We do talk occasionally, usually in the evenings and during an advertisement break in a programme when I have muted the sound. There are a lot of breaks and they can be quite long so our chats can last some time.
For no other reason than Herself’s love of the sound of my voice I told her about the latest scam. This is the one where spammers send a message started “Hi Dad” or “Hi Mum” and then proceed to initiate some kind of conversation that somehow involves parting with a lot of money.
“But how do you know it’s not Daughter in some kind of trouble?” she said.
“Because I’d phone her back using her normal number.”
“But suppose she’s lost her phone or it’s been stolen?”
“Then I’d phone her house number. Anyway they never seem to contact me for some reason.”
This morning I got a text message.
Hi Dad I lost my phone. Can you save this number +353899530011 and send me a message on WhatsApp.
Thank you.
One thing struck me straight away – Daughter would never say “Thank you”.
I pondered what to do next. I came up with a variety of options.
“Is that Paul or John?” That would confuse them?
“Fuck off son. I told you I’m not your father. Go ask the postman who’s your real dad.”
or
“Thank God you contacted me. The Kinahan Gang have been looking for you. I passed on your number”
In the end I decided not to bother my arse.
You little sod do you still have my credit card.
I don’t know. Send me the card number, expiry date and security number and I’ll check.
I received my first scam text earlier this month. It was from “Royal Mail” asking we to visit a web page to reschedule a delivery. It took a couple of seconds to work out it was a scam and it only took so long because I’d sent a signed for letter to my son a couple of days earlier so I had to go through:
1. Shouldn’t they be contacting my son for redelivery?
2. I didn’t tell them my mobile number.
3. The postman leaves a card if he can’t get a signature.
I did Whois on the website, it was registered two days earlier.
I very rarely get spam texts and in fact could count them on one hand. For a while I was inundated with emails from the post office telling me I owed money on a parcel They were all very realistic and I binned them all. I did get one though that looked very slightly different – it was genuine. I confirmed it by visiting the Post Office website and I did actually have to pay a couple of quit for VAT on a parcel from the UK. The tricks are simple: check the sender’s address and never click on their link.
The first Mrs H almost fell for a scam text. It was more sophisticated than the one you received, it used her daughter’s name and some other personal details, probably gleaned from Farcebook. Even after our son told her it was a scam she was still angry with her daughter for “losing her phone”. 🙂