A man has revealed a highly effective strategy for dealing with spam callers while ensuring they won’t ring back again. Millions upon millions of individuals find themselves targeted by fraudulent messages or calls from scammers attempting to access their personal details or banking information.
Independent regulator Ofcom shared “100 million suspicious messages” were “reported to mobile providers last year”, with fresh “planned measures” being introduced to “significantly drive up protections and build on the most effective existing initiatives”.
Fraudsters often employ highly sophisticated tactics, crafted to catch victims unaware.
They might impersonate a family member requiring urgent funds to escape a dangerous situation, masquerade as your bank to trick you into surrendering access to your finances, or pretend to be a legitimate business making enquiries, among numerous other ploys.
One individual has discovered the most “satisfying” method of handling these dishonest callers – by wasting their time.
Posting on Reddit under the heading “The most satisfying way to deal with scam callers that I have found so far”, he revealed: “I get a lot of spam calls…like 10-20 per day.
“Unfortunately due to my job I frequently get legitimate calls from unknown numbers, so just ignoring them isn’t an option.
“I find that if you just tell them off, they don’t care. If you just hang up, they’ll call again.”
“But if you intentionally waste as much of their time as possible, they get legitimately angry. My new method induces maximum frustration for the spam caller.”
He then added a mock-up of a conversation he’s had with scammers, in which he allows them to complete their “intro script (which is usually a whole mouthful for them)”, before repeatedly asking them, “Who is this?”
The Reddit user said: “It drives them nuts.”
He proceeded with his step-by-step example of a scam call, jokingly referring to the spammer as being from “Bulls*** Funding”.
Following each attempt from the scammer to explain the purpose of their call, the man – who called himself ‘Jim’ in his mock script – continuously asks them who they are.
WARNING: Some strong language below
Eventually, he said the scammer becomes so exasperated they hang up – but not before squandering precious time on a call with ‘Jim’.
In the comments section, fellow Reddit users were eager to share their thoughts and experiences.
One person said: “‘Good morning, I’m with Microsoft security –’ ‘No you’re not.’ He got sooooo mad!”
Another shared: “I used to do tech support and got a call once from a call centre and the guy said, ‘Hello! It’s your computer tech support guy!’ so I responded, ‘Buddy I am the tech support guy’ and he went quiet and I laughed loudly before hanging up”.
A third commented: “I had a guy calling from Amazon saying my account had charges that looked suspicious.
“I asked him to just verify who the CEO of Amazon was to prove he actually worked there. He responded with Elon Musk lol”.
Another added: “Me: ‘Does your mum know you scam people for a living? Or do you just tell her you work in a call centre?’
“They either just hang up or swear at me and hang up. They should feel shame and I’m bringing it.”