[conspire] (forw) [GoLugTech] Terrible customer

[Rick Moen]

1.  Passing along posting below for amusement value.

2.  Junk robocalls on the voice line have some fascinating aspects.
For example, sometimes the calling software is so primitive it doesn't 
attempt to distinguish between lines answered by a human and lines
answered by machines.  The 'Rachel from card services' scam-call
(https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/whats-deal-rachel-card-services-your-top-3-questions-answered, other voice-actor names include Anne, Tiffany, Michael, and Heather)
is one of those.

I've been playing with a promising tactic Duncan MacKinnon suggested,
and wish to pass it on.  Duncan suggests saying nothing at all when you
pick up a call from an unknown number.  The reason?  Because some of
these incoming calls are _solely_ designed to probe which numbers 
have 'live' humans answering them, e.g., some of the ones where you 
say 'Hello, hello?', nobody answers, and the unheard caller hangs up a
few seconds later.  Probably many of the calls that reel off recorded
pitches (or send you to a human in a boilerroom) are logging this data,
too.

Point is, you want the calling robots to mark your telephone number down
as 'no human reached'.  Otherwise, your number goes on the schedule to
call much more often.

Duncan points out that a genuine human caller, even if put off balance
by lack of an answering 'Hello?' will soon say something, e.g., 'Anyone
there?'  Then, you have a conversation.

I've tweaked Duncan's method by quietly whisling a tune (or whistling
tunelessly), quietly enough to not register for robots logging call
results but audibly enough that a human caller will parse it as an
answering caller.

I _think_ that's a winning tactic.  The only possible downside is that
if there's a robocall you _want_ to receive (and give it this treatment 
because you don't recognise the number), and it's _dumb_ robocall software
that does nothing until it hears a human say 'Hello?', you might miss
the call.  I'm taking my chances on that.

Reminder:  Caller ID lies.  Anyone using VoIP to call you, such as the
'Microsoft Technical Support' scam-callers Steve Litt mentions, can and
will have Caller ID set to an arbitrary value of the caller's choosing.
For example, I got several 'Microsoft Technical Support' robocalls that
claimed to be from 1-888-888-8888.  I was curious enough about the 
number that, on the third time, I said 'Hello' or 'Speak!' or something.
For the record, when heavily Hindi-accented 'Roy' spoke up representing 
'Microsoft Technical Support', I laughed into the telephone and hung up.

3.  FYI, the linuxmafia.com server was offline this morning from 9:15 to
11:20 AM because PG&E was restringing street power lines on this block
of Altschul Ave.  This was scheduled maintenance work.


----- Forwarded message from Steve Litt via Tech <tech at golug.org> -----

Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 13:18:37 -0400
From: Steve Litt via Tech <tech at golug.org>
To: tech at golug.org
Subject: [GoLugTech] Terrible customer
Organization: Troubleshooters.Com
X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.13.2 (GTK+ 2.24.30; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)

Yesterday I was a terrible customer.

Around 10pm yesterday night (say what?) I received a call from "Roy"
from "Microsoft Certified Technology" or something like that. "Roy" had
a thick Indian accent.

Roy was helpful enough to let me know that there was some unauthorized
activity on one of my Windows computers, so I went to my Daily Driver
Desktop (DDD) to perform whatever instructions he gave me. My DDD is
Void Linux with Openbox window manager, no panel, with dmenu and UMENU.

Roy instructed me to press Windowskey+R. He actually had me find the
Ctrl key and move one to the right. These guys are good: All tech
support should learn from them. Anyway, I went to my DDD and tried to
comply with his wishes, trying to imagine what Windows would do.
Unfortunately, I didn't know what Win+R does (it allows you to insert
one command to the command prompt: I learned that later). So after
about 8 minutes, when I described the result of Win+R as "a list of
stuff", he hung up. But I'd consumed over 5 minutes of Roy's time, and
my wife and daughter were laughing their asses off while I did it.

I'm SUCH a bad customer!

SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2016 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21

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