UK readers are probably sick to death of the people who phone up claiming to be from Microsoft about a virus being detected on your computer. If I have the time I tend to keep them on the phone with stupid questions, or just trying to wind them up, on the assumption that if they are talking to me then they can’t be preying on someone else. Usually that works fairly well and they hang up.
Today I had a different one. He had a new script, something to do with car accidents, and once we had established that I didn’t have a car he was quite willing to admit that he was running a scam and was out to defraud me. He was also happy to stay on the phone and swap insults. I guess they must get bored in their call center.
Still, like email and comment spam, you have to deal with this stuff. Being on a “no call” list doesn’t help, because these people are calling from outside the UK and anyway don’t care that they are ignoring your wishes. BT isn’t interested in protecting users from them. The best they seem to offer is a paid service that will allow you to reject all international calls, which is of no use to me. I may just have to settle for not answering the phone, and checking to see who leaves a message.
I remember with one of them I kept saying I couldn’t hear him and he kept turning the volume up and eventually he hung up on me. I asked another if his mother knew he tried to defraud people for a living and he rang back and complained to my dad that I’d insulted him!
I’ve been getting that one for a while. I usually just say ‘no thank you’ and put the phone down, but if let run, they become very intrusive about my identity (the call always starts ‘Is that Mrs His Name’, to which I say ‘no’, and off we go. I’ve had callers insist I’m lying about my identity, insist I have no right to my actual name, and demand I account for myself being at this address and *not* being Mrs His Name).