We moved a few weeks ago, new phone number, and so far the scammers don't have it on their lists. But over the years I've received most of the scam calls earlier posts have described.
There was some discussion earlier about the sort of people who make these calls, and whether they fully understand that they are taking part in dishonesty and theft. A few years ago there was a report about somebody who somehow, and illegally, had managed to install a secret camera in the offices used by a group of scammers somewhere in India. Footage he had recorded eventually led to the imprisonment of the ringleader. Extracts from the footage showed that the people involved in this operation knew precisely what they were up to.
But there are others who possibly don't realise what they are doing. I've pressed the button they tell me to press if I don't want my internet account to be switched off (because of "suspicious activity"), and been put through to a woman who sounds as if she's at home surrounded by young children. Her job is to connect me to a man who attempts to persuade me to let him take control of my computer. People like her may not know exactly what's going on; they probably don't get paid much for it, either.
There are plenty of UK-based scammers as well. A newspaper article a few years back reported on people mostly in their twenties who worked on investment scams. They pretended to themselves (if they worried about it at all), that their victims were rich or greedy or had probably made their money by cheating others, so it was OK to cheat them.
The problem is that many of these scams seem plausible the first time you hear them. You get to know that Microsoft, Windows and BT Technical Departments are fictional, but then someone comes up with another ingenious line and some people fall for it.
These activities are now so widespread that the police and others are largely overwhelmed, but it seems to me that action could be taken more quickly in many cases. Not all the numbers they call from are spoofed, and it should be possible to track down the owners of the phones or who rents the line. When they've set up an email account or a fake website those things also ought to be traceable. If the people directly involved were quickly clobbered it might deter others. Understandably, the authorities would like to get the Mr. Bigs of these operations, and occasionally they do, but in the meantime the smaller fry may have cheated thousands.
