I deal with scammers all the time. Constantly. For whatever reason, they seem to gravitate to me. Whether face to face, by telephone, via text message, through email, social media, or any other form of communication, I’ve dealt with literally hundreds to thousands (900 – 2000 is my approximate guess, with padding on both sides). I guess I’ve learned a thing or two in those contacts.
I was griping in work chat and said:
What’s up with the scammers today? I’ve had one call on the phone and another trying to phish me through text. They’re definitely human in both cases, because they’re emotionally reactive to nuances. (Pissing people off is the true CAPTCHA.)
I guess I’d been doing it without really thinking about it, and just articulated it there for the first time.
Pissing people off is the true CAPTCHA. Human reactions are complex. By varying the level of nuance and how adversarial you are, you can easily provoke reactions that clearly show whether you’re dealing with a human or a chat script (which may be LLM-based, a CGI script from the ’90s, M-x doctor, or whatever).
One example is to question affiliation. A common script is for the wannabe to pose as a Bell/Telus employee on the phone. By them stating an affiliation outright at the beginning of the call, they give you the first rough edge to grab onto. Pushing back with “how can I verify you are a Bell/Telus employee?” is a good first strike. It’s gentle. A real Bell/Telus employee actually has training in how to respond to this. It doesn’t rattle them. I have only rarely had a scammer on the line who doesn’t give an inappropriate reaction to this. Watch for voices raised and angry/authoritative reactions, as these are some indications of a scammer on the other end of the line. Real Bell/Telus employees are well aware that their behaviour is being monitored and they would be censured or sanctioned for inappropriate behaviour with customers.
A second example is to question chain of custody of information. “This offer you’re telling me about is very interesting — where can I find out more about it online? Super cool.” A scammer is highly unlikely to be able to provide this kind of collateral information. It is plausible that scammers could both pose as agents of an organisation and use the organisation’s own collateral/deals/savings/events information in their scams, but I don’t think I’ve seen it yet. The closest I’ve experienced is being given references to web links that don’t exist or are clearly not the official, well-known site of the organisation they claim. (Confusingly, Blogspot is among the top places I’ve been directed to here — I can’t make sense of that other than to surmise that it’s easiest to get a Google account and Blogspot is the quickest route to getting words online?)
One other thing I tend to subtly put pressure on is chain of contact. Valid organisations have bidirectional communication with their customers. Customers can contact the company, not just the other way around. A valid Bell/Telus employee will happily tell you the methods to get in touch with another Bell/Telus employee to complete any valid business. Most scammers don’t have the faintest clue how to contact the company and will tend to tell you that you have to do it then or never, as no one else can do it for you. To think this situation all the way through, even if there was some small chance the call was actually from Bell/Telus, would you want to deal with a company that’s actually that dodgy? If they’re offering a deal, what must the stability of that deal be, if it’s only available via phone calls coming out of left field? How does any of that make sense, anyway?
Obviously, scammers want to play just outside their targets’ experience, knowledge, and comfort level. These methods do not rely on having the upper hand in the contact to be successful. Indeed, being willing to initiate an uncomfortable situation, however mild, can tell you a lot about the unknown caller. If you’re dealing with a real agent of a real organisation, they’ll actively appreciate that you’re making sure things are on the up-and-up. You’re helping them out in more ways than you know.
What’s the best thing to do if you get a scammer on the line? My favourite is to ask them to hold on for a sec while I get them the information they’re looking for (if they’re going into a spiel, I tell them I’m going to get my account number so we can act on this), mute the phone, and set it down while I go about my business. It’s the lowest-effort way to waste their time and resources.
It is possible to stop scammers. We simply have to make their business as difficult, inconvenient, stressful, exhausting, restrictive, uncertain, unprofitable, dangerous, unsatisfying, stigmatised, and otherwise unrewarding as possible. It’s not realistic to think that law enforcement or the government will address these issues. They have repeatedly refused to take even small steps toward beginning to mitigate the problem, let alone anything beyond that. They also won’t help you if you’re scammed. It’s all up to us, folks.