Spam spam spam spam

Spamity spam! Sorry, got carried away  there …

Spam. We all get it. We all know there is NOT a Nigerian prince needing help. My personal email spam has an extremely high opinion of my libido. Still spammers gotta spam. They’re getting wiser about it. Now I get emails that purport to be from my very own company telling me to do things. And invitations from my professional social media account, again asking me to update information.  Spoofing they call it, pretending to be something they are not.

Still it surprises me that spammers are going old school and hitting the phones now. They spoof there too. I get calls telling me my credit card has problems – and they cite a company I do not do business with. And that my student loans are in trouble – which is amazing since I never had student loans (having gone to school when it was still semi-affordable). All of these calls come from real phone numbers – numbers that belong to an individual and it is completely legal! It is both amusing and frightening to get a call from your own phone number, answering to find that you are “behind on your student loan payments”.

Registering with the Do Not Call list does not stop these spoofers. Block the number and you may find you are blocking a friend. And if it your number, you may get tons of calls from upset people who have been getting telemarketer calls from your number.

So what is the answer? I have none except for diligence. Do not give personal information to someone who has called you. Instead, look up the number (do not use the number they provide) and call back to ensure it is legitimate before providing information. Likely you will annoy whomever is calling you – remind them of the potential issues of simply giving this information to anyone who calls.  An annoyed person is much better than a lost identity.