I came across this article titled "Don’t Taunt Fake Microsoft Tech Support Scammers, Just Hang Up!" and I figured I'd share it here to see what everyone else thinks of it.
The author talks about the details of how a call center and the scam itself works. One sentence in the article that I'd like to comment on says:
"The volume of scamming and the technology used to make many simultaneous calls means that you cannot make a dent in the scammers’ profits."
Cannot make a dent in their profits? I would think if enough people were to waste their time instead of hanging up, that means they aren't calling someone else who would otherwise unfortunately fall for the scam.
Another section of the article talks about how the scammers may threaten violence, and even acknowledges they are very unlikely to follow through with it. While there has been a few times where they called me even before I joined this site, the worst they have done is swear at me for wasting their time. Even if they did threaten violence, I'd just laugh at them. I have even watched multiple YouTube videos over the past year or two from several channels where the user gets threatened and clearly nothing ever happens to them.
The other point that I'd like to comment on is the third section:
"Fake Tech Support Already Control Your Computer"
Yeah... that is super unlikely. If they did already control my computer, why would they even need to call?
@Markiemm#115334 Right. We should not not simply hang. A scambaiter’s couple of goals are to hurt (waste time of the scamming gang), expose the scammers and create awareness among the general public.
For several months my pairents were getting calls from a scam number " usually if i answered i would just hang up but 1 day i decided to answer "they knew my name igave fake info and by doing so gave me a little insite to what scam it was and how they opperate and it"s strange since i gave misleading info my parents have not been getting any more scam callers . Ignoring them won"t stop the calls that i learnt .
Hanging up is what a scambaiter doesn’t want to do, as we want to waste as much of their time while they stay on the line. That way, that call representative won’t have time to answer another call. If enough scambaiters are calling the same call center at the same time, they will run out of representatives to answer a call in which a victim may potentially fall for the scam.
I can't think of how a scammer can really threaten physical violence other than screaming profanity on the phone. Even if you gave a scammer your real home address, (it is possible but unlikely) that a scammer will send a serial killer to your house or a thief (but still don't ever give a scammer your home address as this is still possible).
Once again, the “phone experts” are better at SEO-ing their advice than actually giving out good advice.
If just 20% of the dialed population on a scammer's robocall list scambaited rather than hanging up, the scammer would have a very difficult time getting sales leads to cut into live agents.