Robo Calls

aren't just for selling extended warranties and reducing your credit card interest rate any more. Now there's a new scam. The robo caller asks for someone you've never heard of. It then asks you to press 2 if you aren't that person. You press 2. Then the robo caller asks you to press 3 if they have the wrong number. You press 3. The robo caller then asks you to STAY ON THE LINE so that they can update their information. Muzak plays. I hung up.

What leads me to believe that this is some kind of scam is that I'd received collection calls at our old phone number periodically for years. They were looking for the person who had our phone number before we did. (In fact, the first call was the second phone call I received at that number.) It go to be a joke--I'd say to J, "TW got a call today." Every time the account was sold, we'd get another call. Most of the callers were reasonably polite when I explained that our sole relationship to TW was that we'd acquired his phone number when we moved, although one particularly aggressive fellow demanded that I prove that I did not know TW. (By that time we'd had our phone number for eight years!) I hung up.

Since I'd never received a call from a real person asking for this new person, I suspect that someone is trying to part me from personal information. (I suppose there are people out there who can be cajoled out of their social security numbers and credit card information, but I'm not one of them.) And I wonder, if it is a scam, how long it will take the government to shut it down, given that it took years to shut down the car warranty scam.