Scammer Called–Knew Too Much!
I got a haunting call yesterday. A man called, it sounded like from India, and told me that he was calling from Dell about my Dell (Model number mentioned) computer. So I listened more seriously. He said my computer was sending error messages to Dell and we needed to fix it.
Alarm bells immediately went up.
What?
I knew that was nonsense!!
So I said to him, if you are from Dell, email me from your Dell.com email account now.
And he said, “No, no, no!!”
And by the tone of his voice, I was 100% sure it was a scam.
I hung up.
But now I am worried. Did someone at Dell sell customer’s information to scammers? Did Dell have a data breach? How come this stranger in India knew I owned a Dell, knew my model number and how did he get my phone number? I have not put that online anywhere!!
Something stinks here, and I’m not liking it.
I tweeted Dell yesterday, and they told me to report it to the FTC. I did, but I’m still uneasy.
What do you think?
My reaction is not comforting but how creepy! Just hang up like you did!
I’ve had these calls for years. I ordered my laptop from a reputable website, received less than 24 hours before moving to Europe. In fact, I remember we were getting nervous it wouldn’t get here on time. It came out of the box for the first time in Europe. Never connected it to any US electric grid, internet provider, nothing. Got that call on my unlisted house phone in France. A number we received 4 weeks after leaving the US. A number from which I had not called the website, the laptop manufacturer, nor any other business, US or France based, since I speak no french. I quickly figured out that it was a cold call, although, according to the caller, a very urgent one!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously. I decided to have some fun with him, and eventually he got too frustrated to talk with me any further. Never received a call at that phone number again.
I have, in the meantime, received such a call on my cell phone, since moving back to the US. Funny thing is, we don’t even own that laptop anymore, turned out to be a lemon. Replaced hard drive twice in one year. Third time we just replaced the whole thing with a Mac.
I think you may have been infected and need to run a good scan. Also could be a keystroke logger transmitting data but that doesn’t usually account for model numbers.
Definitely a scam. Maybe make sure all three credit reporting agencies know as well just in case? Do you have identify theft protection plan? Not sure if that is necessary but this stuff is certainly alarming.
A quick search turned up several other people reporting the exact same scenario. A representative claiming to be from Dell posted the following reply to an extremely similar situation on a Dell’s Customer Care forum:
“Thank you for posting this. Dell is aware of this and other complaints and is investigating. No, there will not be a public post/blog. We consider this closed from a Forum perspective.”
Source: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/customercare/f/4674/t/19592122
I could not find anything indicating the scammers did anything else – they apparently did not steal the credit card numbers, etc. All they did was what they tried to do to you – try to get you to make a purchase using your own information. That is just from a quick internet search, so that conclusion might be incorrect.
As the President of a computer club, I very very very strongly advise people to delete their credit cards from all businesses they use (such as Amazon, iTunes, etc) so if a data breach occurs, the thieves don’t have your credit card number. If I buy something (like books at Amazon, which I recently did), I’ll enter my credit card number, make the purchase and delete the credit card number from my Amazon account immediately.
I actually go a lot farther when I make purchases than just deleting my credit card number. I’ll use online services to enter a single use credit card number with a temporary address in another state, a fake phone number, and more. It costs a little bit to do that, but if a data breach happens the thieves don’t have any real data on me. Here’s one for example:
https://www.abine.com/maskme/
Here’s an ebook I recommend to everyone about how to Take Control of your Online Privacy – it costs $15.00, but I find it extremely worth the money and it’s extremely easy to understand and do:
https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/online-privacy
Russ. I admire you diligence, but I play the odds and take the risk. The world is too automated today and moving more in that direction, and I am a slave to it’s convenience. If I have a bad guy, do bad things to my accounts or property, I’ll deal with it, but I order way to much stuff to constantly be deleting my card number from places. Amazon, Seamless (New York all-in-one menu & delivery service), Netflix, etc. etc..
Thanks Russ. I suppose it’s not too much difficulty to enter my cc number when needed again. We are so used to automation that we take it as normal when often it’s not necessary.
Ugh. A few months ago my parents computer went a little wonky. I say “wonky” because I feel people overuse the word virus. In metaphor speak, headaches, colds, sniffles, fevers and flus, all get called viruses. And granted, there are little easy to fix viruses and just fried your hard drive viruses. Anyway, my parents often call me telling me that they have a virus, when it’s really just a lot of difficult to close pop-ups, cookies, and automatically installed add-ware.
This time my parents emails disappeared, or some disappeared, or didn’t appear where they used to, or something. Anyway, my dad goes to Verizon, because they disappeared off of his iPad, then they tell him to call yahoo (can you even call yahoo?) because that’s his mail provider…regardless, he winds up talking to some guy on the phone who says he has a virus and twenty minutes later he’s giving him over $400!!! This is all told to me by phone via my mom in Pennsylvania (I’m in New York). I said what?!? I said, “Mom, I told him I didn’t know what the problem was, but I can tell you it wasn’t a $400 problem.” Saying this to my mom isn’t good either, because she’ll just tell my dad, having her thoughts confirmed, and he won’t want to hear it of course. Who would? Anyway, my dad is a smart guy, but that was not smart. My mom eventually called a kid who used to be the computer guy at the school she used to teach at. He took the computer, cleaned it up, and then asked if $45 would be all right. Anyway, thought I’d share. People need to get a life.
Your parents sound like good people Paul, and your lucky to have them. I’m thinking they are lucky to have you to! That’s the sweetest post ♡
I used to get the same calls until I finally got rude. I asked nicely many times before, then decided to start yelling, “NO!” into the phone when they called. It stopped after that. Haven’t heard from them in a long time. No consequences that I’m aware of.
LOTS of people own Dell computers, that’s how the scammer “knew”. Just like how I got a call about how my Windows PC had a virus… Yet, I haven’t run Windows since 2002. 9 times out of 10 though, they’d get a Windows user on the phone.
I think you’re right, how did the scammer get hold of your Dell information? What is Dell doing about it?
Eyes, this is OT but I thought you and your readers might be interested in this dramatic example of asymmetrical facial expression — in this booking shot of the Texas attorney general! Whew, look at that expression — sociopath alert! I would love to know what you or another emotional expert sees here based on facial profiling!
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/08/28/ken_paxton_anti_gay_texas_attorney_general_is_in_legal_trouble.html
Fascinating. I’m not Eyes but even his left side looks too smug to me, reminds me of a lying politician I know who has also made some money for himself previously. I still don’t think he realises he’s done something unjust – and his words confirm that. I think he’s trying to uphold goodness as he sees it but science and now the law doesn’t see face to face with him. You need to be mixed up to hold views against both of those authorities I’d say. Thanks for posting it auberge.
Two-face: Once an upstanding district attorney of Gotham City and an ally of Batman. Harvey Dent goes insane…..wikipedia.
His expression looks like contempt, although when I looked for other photos of him, I see that he makes that asymmetrical expression in basically every smile photo. I looked at a few hundred photos of him (lots of duplicates, but easily a few dozen unique ones from different times and contexts) and it appears that he probably has a medical/physiological condition which affects his expressions, because there were some photos where it looked like he was showing contempt, and others where it looked like he wasn’t, despite all of them being an asymmetrical expression like the one in your photo.
There were a couple of common characteristics I saw in almost every photo of him. His right eyelid (left side on screen) has a droop to it, his right eye appears to look in a different direction from his left eye (or vice versa?), and the right side of his mouth and his right cheek seem to not function the same as their left counterparts. For that reason, I’d caution against making easy, blanket pronouncements based on his facial expressions– particularly for contempt– because to differentiate between contempt and not contempt with a condition like that will be a lot more difficult to do with him than it would be for other people. There were some photos I saw of him where his mouth was asymmetrical as you would see with contempt, but which didn’t appear to actually be contempt. In this particular photo, I think there is contempt, however.
When someone has a condition like that (and I didn’t spend a lot of time investigating, but I didn’t find anything talking about any such condition or incident that might lead to one, so he may keep it private, I don’t know), it’s important to remember that even when we can say for certain that someone is showing contempt, we can never say for certain what that contempt is about. We can guesstimate based on context and other data, but unless we can ask him and he answers for himself, or we have a lot more context in terms of what specifically he’s responding to at the time, we can’t ever be completely sure. But someone who grows up with a condition like that which affects their facial expressions may grow up with a lot of negative experiences around it– teasing, judging (misjudging in particular), etc., which can make them especially sensitive about it and affect the way they react to the world around them. I’m speaking in general terms here, not specific to him, so try not to read too much into what I’m saying in terms of him specifically. Anyway, those experiences can certainly play a role in how someone develops socially– and into how they’ll handle themselves in both public and private settings.
I’m advising caution in cases like these because it’s very easy to hurt innocent people who suffer from these kinds of physiological conditions and have no choice in the way other people will encounter and experience them. It’s not worth hurting those people for the sake of feeling certain about one or two particular people, so I’m going to generally caution against being *TOO* certain about someone who appears to have some kind of physical or neurological impairment. You don’t want to inadvertently hurt someone who’s already been through enough.
I watched a brief clip of two of him talking as a political figure, and I don’t see him as a sociopath actually. I could name a few people who I do see as sociopaths, but I’ll refrain from discussing politics here on the blog. There are a few national figures who I’m pretty certain are sociopaths, and quite a few more who I’m equally certain aren’t– I’ll leave it at that. I don’t personally think this guy is one of those– not clinically. That doesn’t mean I like him or agree with him, and it means nothing in terms of whether he’s likely to be innocent or guilty of the charges against him. It only means that I don’t think he’s probably clinically a sociopath. And I could also be wrong. I’m not as good as Eyes is in this stuff. I’m very good with reading some people, and less so with a few others. I’d give my read on this guy somewhere in the 75-85% certainty range. I prefer to be over 90% certain, but this guy is at least not one of the people I’m only 40-50% certain on.
I could write more about him, but I think the rest probably doesn’t belong here on Eyes’s blog so I’ll leave it out here and avoid the politics.
Thanks Keith. Do you think his facial expression could just be related to a previous stroke or related medical condition?
I have no idea what all could be a cause, but there are probably dozens of possibilities– I don’t know enough about strokes to say, but I’d guess it could probably cause that sort of thing, as could injuries, maybe some illnesses in rare instances, a biological thing, reaction to medication, nerve damage of some kind, or something from a surgery– I don’t know enough to speculate about a possible cause, but it definitely looks like there’s more going on with his face than *just* an expression of contempt when I look at other photos and watch video clips of him.
Personally, I don’t like the guy and I don’t trust him further than I could throw him based on my own facial profiling, because I just don’t find him the least bit trustworthy. But whenever you see something that suggests there’s more behind a facial expression that goes beyond just a facial expression, it’s important to take it into account too, and that’s why I pointed that out. There are people who have various kinds of issues which give them atypical facial expressions that people will tend to find off-putting, and I’m not fond of making a person’s life more difficult just because of something they have no control over.
In the case of the photo in your article, that’s contempt and I see arrogance in it as well. So in addition to taking into account other factors which might be influencing how you view a person so as to be fair to them, I’ll also add that it’s equally important not to discount what you DO see after taking those factors into account. I would give this guy a free pass due to whatever condition is behind his atypical facial expressions, but he doesn’t get a free pass for, nor would I ignore the contempt and arrogance or general lack of trustworthiness that I see in him after taking that condition into account. It’s important to always be fair in both directions, not just one. 🙂
Hi Keith, that’s good advice. What you’re saying is that you shouldn’t let one perceived aspect overshadow another and vice versa. (Just to be clear, the photo isn’t from my article as another reader posted it.)
Eyes, did you purchase the computer in person or online? I think it’s safer to purchase in person. Fewer people have access to your computer before you take it home. If you purchase online – everyone from the packer at the store, to the mailman, or deliveryman has access to your package, and sometimes they illegally open the package to get sensitive information.