From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 10/22/2025 8:46 PM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

In article <0001HW.2EA991CB010C941A700007F8438F@news.supernews.com>,
WolfFan <akwolffan@zoho.com> wrote:

On Oct 21, 2025, Dorothy J Heydt wrote
(in article <t4IIE7.233t@kithrup.com>):

[Hal Heydt]
I've developed a number of tactics that work to varying degrees.
Since the calls I get are on a household land (three adults and
teenager), I'll ask who they're trying to contact. If they come
up with a name, it's almost invariably pronounced wrong. I still
get calls for Dorothy, to which I reply that she ahsn't been at
this number for over three years.

My mother still gets calls for my father, whorCOs been dead for the better >> part of a decade. She also gets snail mail rCyoffersrCO for various things. >> The most amusing have been the rCyfinal expenserCO guys and the life
insurance guys.

[Hal Heydt]
Got a call wanting to talk to Dorothy today. I gave my usual
answer. Then he asked if I knew her, to which I replied,
"Intimately." The implications seemed get by the caller. He
that this was the only number they for her, at which point I
repeated that she hadn't been at the number for over three years,
and--no--I didn't have another number for her.

I try to give them a bad day. Particularly if they have a South
Asian accent, I explain to them that they are dishonoring their
parents and their family. Even for Westerners, asking them if
their mother knows what they *actually* do for a living, and is
she proud of them, seems to give them pause.

However, note that in the Asian case, a huge number of scam
calls are being made by literal slaves, held in captivity.

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-myanmar-scam-cities-booming-crackdown.html

pt
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom


WolfFan <akwolffan@zoho.com> posted:

On Oct 21, 2025, Joy Beeson wrote
(in article<h9egfkt2ec92ilghlerge6o0gcqqjv3kel@4ax.com>):

On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 13:29:33 -0400 (EDT), kludge@panix.com
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Joy Beeson<jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

On Tue, 7 Oct 2025 17:54:37 -0000 (UTC), "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

maybe one of the victims annoyed by all these unpunished scam calls will hunt down the scammers and kill them.

The people who do the actual calling are slaves.

Many of them aren't people at all but machines pretending to be people. Once they think you'll talk they'll transfer you to a human.

And the human invariably has an incomprehensible accent;
it's no longer possible to find sufficiently-desperate
Americans.

Whenever I can do so without inconveniencing myself, I
string them along -- time spent reciting to my pocket is
time not spent harassing other people. But the human always
hangs up the first time he fails to extract my data.

Sometimes I can get the robot to respond to "do you have a
right to call this number" with "Oh, no, that's not the
case!".

I just love the calls where they rCyhave to verify your identityrCO and want the last four of your social, the zip code, various other things. IrCOve started to point out that they called me, they are the ones who need to verify stuff... such as their name, the orginization they represent, what, exactly, theyrCOre selling... they usually hang up.

I'll say 'hello', but if a human answers, and I suspect a scam, my next
line, regardless of what they ask, may well be a blunt "What do you want?". This
throws them off their script.

Pt
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <t4JvC5.1qGq@kithrup.com>, djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt) wrote:

My condolences.

This was 20 years ago.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

begin fnord
Crryptoengineer <user3070@newsgrouper.org.invalid> writes:

I'll say 'hello', but if a human answers, and I suspect a scam, my next
line, regardless of what they ask, may well be a blunt "What do you want?". This
throws them off their script.

Harlan Ellison(tm) answered the phone with a curt "YEAH?". I find that
a good example to follow.
--
Steve Coltrin spcoltri@omcl.org
"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel
to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."
- Associated Press
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <m2o6pxr5xw.fsf@kelutral.omcl.org>,
Steve Coltrin <spcoltri@omcl.org> wrote:

begin fnord
Crryptoengineer <user3070@newsgrouper.org.invalid> writes:

I'll say 'hello', but if a human answers, and I suspect a scam, my next
line, regardless of what they ask, may well be a blunt "What do you

want?". This

throws them off their script.

Harlan Ellison(tm) answered the phone with a curt "YEAH?". I find that
a good example to follow.

[Hal Heydt]
I kind of growl, "Hello."
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 10/23/2025 12:07 AM, Crryptoengineer wrote:

I'll say 'hello', but if a human answers, and I suspect a scam, my next
line, regardless of what they ask, may well be a blunt "What do you want?". This
throws them off their script.

For my ex-land line (now IP), I answer "this is the Major." If someone
ever responds, "This is Condor," or "This is Joe Turner," I'll talk to
them.
--
Mike Benveniste -- mhb@murkyether.com (Clarification Required)
Such commentary has become ubiquitous on the Internet and is widely
perceived to carry no indicium of reliability and little weight.
(Digital Media News v. Escape Media Group, May 2014).
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 10/23/2025 11:30 AM, Steve Coltrin wrote:

begin fnord
Crryptoengineer <user3070@newsgrouper.org.invalid> writes:

I'll say 'hello', but if a human answers, and I suspect a scam, my next
line, regardless of what they ask, may well be a blunt "What do you want?". This
throws them off their script.

Harlan Ellison(tm) answered the phone with a curt "YEAH?". I find that
a good example to follow.

I've read, but have not seen an actual case, that answering 'Yes'
or 'Yeah' is problematic. Many banking-by-phone systems use voice
prints to identify customers, and a sample of you saying 'Yes'
can be used for nefarious purposes.

When I pick up the phone, I say 'Hello'. If there's no immediate
response, or its a robot, I hang up. If it's a human, and I suspect
a scam, I won't answer questions - I'll ask them, and unless they
can rapidly convince me, I'll hang up.

pt
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Michael Benveniste <mhb@murkyether.com> wrote:

For my ex-land line (now IP), I answer "this is the Major." If someone
ever responds, "This is Condor," or "This is Joe Turner," I'll talk to
them.

No one will ever respond with that. They don't want to get shot at.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article
<18713221671c9fe2$24$3429965$802601b3@news.usenetexpress.com>,
Michael Benveniste <mhb@murkyether.com> wrote:

On 10/23/2025 12:07 AM, Crryptoengineer wrote:

I'll say 'hello', but if a human answers, and I suspect a scam, my next line, regardless of what they ask, may well be a blunt "What do you want?".
This
throws them off their script.

For my ex-land line (now IP), I answer "this is the Major." If someone
ever responds, "This is Condor," or "This is Joe Turner," I'll talk to
them.

I answer the phone with "hello". I use the following response tree

1) no reply after 5 seconds or so; I hang up.
2) if a recorded message, then
2a) from a local utility, I listen
2b) otherwise, I hang up.
3) If person calling is a friend or relative, I stay on the line until
the conversation is over
4) if I hear a unknown human reply, I ask "who do you wish to speak to"
4a) if they start their spiel without saying my name, I hang up
4b) if they call me "Mr. Robert", I hang up
4c) if they Robert, Bob, or Mr. Woodward (or even Robert Woodward), I
will listen and depending on what they say, I might not immediately hang
up.
--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_. rCo-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Evelyn C. Leeper <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch wrote:

The federal government has been shut down for about a week.

Now it's been shut down for 40 days and 40 nights, a new record.
To say that it's dysfunctional would be a major understatement.

Despite the shutdown, the federal debt, already by far the largest
debt in all human history, continues to grow.

Indeed, if the shutdown means that the laws are not being enforced,
maybe one of the victims annoyed by all these unpunished scam calls
will hunt down the scammers and kill them. And won't get punished
for it.

Murder is a state crime, and the last I checked neither Virginia nor
any other state had shut down.

I'm not convinced that it would be murder.

Suppose that someone were to knock on your door in an attempt to sell
you something. No doubt you would politely tell them you weren't
interested. But suppose they came back ten minutes later. This
time you're less polite. And you install a prominent "NO SOLICITORS"
sign on your door. And suppose they came back after yet another ten
minutes. This time you threaten to call the police. Ten minutes
later when they knock yet again, you do call the police. But the
police do nothing. The harassment continues, for hours, for days,
for weeks, from them, and from dozens of others just like them.

I don't know what I would do if it happened to me. There is no
violence in me. But I do know exactly what I would do if it happened
to you and I were on your jury. No matter what you had done to your
persistent harasser, so long as no innocent people were harmed I would
be voting not guilty. Everyone has the right to be left alone,
especially in their own home.

Perhaps you think that's a bad analogy, since unwanted phone calls,
unlike unwanted door knocks, can be blocked by leaving the phone
unplugged or turned off. True. But that greatly reduces the value
of even having a phone.

If there were as many scam calls decades ago as there are now, would
you have ever met Mark? Or, having me him, would you have found it
possible to meet up again, or would your relationship have consisted
entirely of a handful of missed connections? And would either of you
had the jobs you had? Or would potential employers been unable to
reach you? Would either of you have even gone to the schools that
qualified you for those jobs? Or would the schools been unable to
reach you to tell you that you had been accepted?

Scam calls aren't the most serious crime. But neither are they
trivial. Each individual scam call may be trivial, but they add up. Collectively, they make telephones useless. Just as false fire alarms
make fire alarms useless if they go off every few minutes all day and
all night, leaving people with no alternative but to cut the wire
and do without.

The total amount of useful life lost to scam calls greatly exceeds
the amount of useful life lost to the 9/11 attacks and to all school
shootings.

Scam calls are a tithe that costs time and money from everyone who has
to be available to receive calls. Especially if they have to work
nights and sleep days.

And it's not just the time the call itself takes. It's the constant distractions. It's turning us into a nation of Harrison Bergerons.
A distraction caused a plane crash when it interrupted a checklist,
causing the flaps to never be set. Distractions have caused infants
to be left in hot cars all day, killing them.

I know several people who quit lucrative jobs because they were
required to be open to calls from unknown numbers at all hours, and
this resulted in constant interruptions by scammers.

I read about someone who didn't return from mountain climbing, and
wasn't answering his satellite phone. Rescuers were sent. One of
them died. It turned out the climber was fine the whole time, but
simply didn't answer calls from unknown numbers, since the last
hundred such calls he had received were all scams.

We have laws and a legal system for a reason. But when that system
totally fails, people have the right to defend themselves.

I would argue that it failed long ago. As I've discussed here before,
48 years ago I was falsely convicted of burglarizing an office. The
string of burglaries continued when I was in jail. But we have a
system in which no non-wealthy falsely accused person has any rational
choice other than to plead guilty in return for a reduced sentence.
Otherwise they're likely to end up like North Carolina's Bob Kelly,
who refused to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, so he ended up with a
dozen life sentences instead.

And a system in which proof of innocence is irrelevant after three
weeks, at least here in Virginia. If you were convicted of murdering
me in the Old Dominion, and I showed up alive and well four weeks
later, they'd go ahead and execute you anyway. Similarly in Texas,
which is about to execute Robert Roberson even though he was proven
innocent.

Virginia just elected a new Attorney General, Jay Jones. According to Wikipedia:

In October 2025, Jones came under fire for an August 2022 text
conversation with his former Republican delegate colleague Carrie
Coyner, in which Jones repeatedly made statements advocating
violence against then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert and his family.
Jones, who was not in the legislature at the time, stated that if he
had two bullets and could shoot Gilbert, Adolf Hitler, or Pol Pot,
Gilbert "gets two bullets to the head". Jones acknowledged that he
had talked about hoping Gilbert's children would die because "Only
when people feel pain personally do they move on policy", before
describing Gilbert and his wife as "evil" and "breeding little
fascists".

Don't blame me for his election. I wrote in "NONE OF THE ABOVE."
I'm really looking forward to someday being prosecuted by him for
something I didn't do. Not.

Joy Beeson <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

The people who do the actual calling are slaves.

What is your evidence for this claim? In what nation are these slaves
being held? And what nationality are the slave? In my experience,
they nearly all have Indian accents. Does India have slavery? Or
are neighboring countries kidnapping and enslaving India's citizens?

If they are slaves, it's best to rescue them if possible. But
sometimes it isn't possible. Just because enemy soldiers were
involuntarily drafted doesn't mean it's wrong to defend yourself
against them.

kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Many of them aren't people at all but machines pretending to be
people. Once they think you'll talk they'll transfer you to a
human.

I'm pretty sure there's almost always a real person there, but one
with a pre-recorded voice menu system that can only say a few things.
I think this is to hide the fact that the actual person there has a
strong foreign accent.

I would advocate "pulling the plug" on India. If they won't enforce
laws against making overseas scam calls, it should be made impossible
for them to make overseas calls at all. Let them scam each other.

If, for whatever reason, it's impossible to pull the plug, I think
it's at least as legitimate for the US to bomb known Indian scam call
centers as it is to bomb suspected drugs smuggling ships in the
high seas, which they're currently doing.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

Joy Beeson <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

The people who do the actual calling are slaves.

What is your evidence for this claim? In what nation are these slaves
being held? And what nationality are the slave? In my experience,
they nearly all have Indian accents. Does India have slavery? Or
are neighboring countries kidnapping and enslaving India's citizens?

She's referring to the scam call operations in the Golden Triangle. Most
of those calls go to China but an awful lot of them do come to the US.

Where they are held might be Burma but it's a special economic zone that
is under the control of Chinese nationals not associated with the Chinese government.

Most of the folks being held captive are Chinese nationals but there are
plenty of other people from around Asia including English-speakers from
India, Pakistan, Thailand and the Phillipines. They are offered large
sums of money to come work in the Triangle but when they get there they discover it's not what they had expected.

Wang Xing, a famous actor in China, was even kidnapped by one of these operations, and had to be retrieved by the Chinese government,

I would advocate "pulling the plug" on India. If they won't enforce
laws against making overseas scam calls, it should be made impossible
for them to make overseas calls at all. Let them scam each other.

You can pull the plug on any place and the scammers will move. India
had a lot of scam centers a few years ago but times have changed. Now
it's the Golden Triangle. Thailand is cracking down and shutting off
internet connectivity out there, so expect the spam operations will be somewhere else soon.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

In article <10erh2k$h2q$1@panix2.panix.com>,
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

Joy Beeson <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:

The people who do the actual calling are slaves.

What is your evidence for this claim? In what nation are these slaves >>being held? And what nationality are the slave? In my experience,
they nearly all have Indian accents. Does India have slavery? Or
are neighboring countries kidnapping and enslaving India's citizens?

She's referring to the scam call operations in the Golden Triangle. Most
of those calls go to China but an awful lot of them do come to the US.

Where they are held might be Burma but it's a special economic zone that
is under the control of Chinese nationals not associated with the Chinese >government.

[Hal Heydt]
The BBC has an article up on the Chinese government cracking down
on the scam operations, particularly in the Chinese border region
of Myanmar.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

You can pull the plug on any place and the scammers will move.
India had a lot of scam centers a few years ago but times have
changed.

I'm skeptical. India is unique in that it has a billion desperately
poor people who can speak (sort of) English. So few Americans are
gullible enough to fall for those scams that they must spend weeks of
futile calls for every one person who is stupid enough to fall for it.
So the scammers must be making just pennies per day. (Or their masters
are, if the scammers are in fact slaves, which I strongly doubt.)

Also, I recognize the accent. It's utterly unlike anything else. And
it's become so emblematic of scamming that I have found it impossible
to believe anything anyone says in that accent. Not even if it's
a YouTube math lecture complete with ironclad proofs.

I never used to be prejudiced, and logically I know there must be some
honest citizens of India, but given that every one of the last several
hundred times I've heard that accent, it was spoken by someone trying
to scam me, ....

If I start hearing scammers with a different accent, I'll notice
immediately. It would be as weird as hearing Russians speaking
Italian, like in the the unforgettable 1942 Italian production
of Ayn Rand's _We the Living_.

I expect that India will keep scamming until inflation causes the
value of the dollar to equal the value of the rupee. I doubt that
will happen until the next administration.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

I would advocate "pulling the plug" on India. If they won't enforce
laws against making overseas scam calls, it should be made impossible
for them to make overseas calls at all. Let them scam each other.

The bulk SMS guys are moving to the US now, so we'd better pull the
plug on ourselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIgdXah-VuE

--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 11/10/25 9:59 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

I would advocate "pulling the plug" on India. If they won't enforce
laws against making overseas scam calls, it should be made impossible
for them to make overseas calls at all. Let them scam each other.

The bulk SMS guys are moving to the US now, so we'd better pull the
plug on ourselves.

Just a little while ago, someone tried to spam MASSFILC with a message
begging us not to go to any other scammer, just to them. The One True
Scammer. (The message was held and deleted.)
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

I would advocate "pulling the plug" on India. If they won't
enforce laws against making overseas scam calls, it should be made
impossible for them to make overseas calls at all. Let them scam
each other.

The bulk SMS guys are moving to the US now, so we'd better pull the
plug on ourselves.

I have plenty of experience with scam phone calls and with email
spams. But I have no experience with SMS, as I've never had a cell
phone, so I won't comment on SMS.

Now that the government shutdown is over, I suggest that they
prioritize scam calls. The domestic callers can be sentenced to
prison. As for callers from India, again I suggest that if it's
legitimate to bomb ships on the high seas because they're suspected
of carrying drugs intended for willing buyers, then it's certainly
legitimate to bomb Indian scam call centers designed to repeatedly
annoy hundreds of millions of unwilling Americans in order to
financially scam the few thousand of us who are most gullible.

If the US government can't figure out where in India the scam call
centers are, they can instead target the central offices and other
telephone infrastructure. Since most people staffing them are
innocent, they can give a warning first, like Israel does before
bombing a place, so that the staff will have plenty of time to
evacuate. The goal, after all, isn't to kill anyone, it's to stop
the billions upon billions of illegal scam calls that are repeatedly
annoying Americans.

Ideally, Modi would take action against the crooks. But if he
refuses, the US has the right to destroy infrastructure that's being
used to victimize Americans, even if this destruction makes it
impossible for anyone in India to phone anyone anywhere. The scammers
have already made phone use impossible for American night-shift
workers who have to remain open to emergency phone calls during the
day shift.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 11/13/25 5:43 PM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Keith F. Lynch <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

I would advocate "pulling the plug" on India. If they won't
enforce laws against making overseas scam calls, it should be made
impossible for them to make overseas calls at all. Let them scam
each other.

The bulk SMS guys are moving to the US now, so we'd better pull the
plug on ourselves.

I have plenty of experience with scam phone calls and with email
spams. But I have no experience with SMS, as I've never had a cell
phone, so I won't comment on SMS.

Now that the government shutdown is over, I suggest that they
prioritize scam calls. The domestic callers can be sentenced to
prison. As for callers from India, again I suggest that if it's
legitimate to bomb ships on the high seas because they're suspected
of carrying drugs intended for willing buyers, then it's certainly
legitimate to bomb Indian scam call centers designed to repeatedly
annoy hundreds of millions of unwilling Americans in order to
financially scam the few thousand of us who are most gullible.

Except, of course, it's not, in either case.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://leepers.us/evelyn
In the words of Cato, "Fasciculi de Epstein emitti debent."
In my words, "Invoke the 25th in 25."
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Evelyn C. Leeper <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com> wrote:

Except, of course, it's not, in either case.

I agree about the alleged drug boats. Why not have the Coast Guard
intercept and inspect them? Innocent until proven guilty. Or, better
yet, allow adults to buy and consume whatever drugs they choose, so
long as the drugs aren't mislabeled. The US is supposed to be a free
country. There have been large numbers of drug overdoses only because
the concentration and the composition of the drugs hasn't been clearly
and accurately labeled. Let every CVS sell USP heroin.

But what about the billions of daily scam calls to unwilling victims?
What's the alternative?

* Every American just has to put up with an interruption every ten
minutes, forever? Or rather until greater automation results in
scam calls every ten seconds instead?

* Americans just have to give up using telephones?

* America will pay tribute to Modi in return for a promise to leave us
alone? It worked so well for Ethelred when he paid the Vikings to
leave the English alone.

Do you also think the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound was
illegitimate? It too was in a sovereign nation without its
government's permission. The loss of useful life caused by the 9/11
attacks is far less than the ongoing loss of useful life caused by
scam phone calls. A billion seconds, once, from each of 3000 people
is less than a hundred seconds a day every day from each of 300
million people, in perpetuity.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.fandom

On 11/14/25 9:59 AM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

Evelyn C. Leeper <evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com> wrote:

Except, of course, it's not, in either case.

I agree about the alleged drug boats. Why not have the Coast Guard
intercept and inspect them? Innocent until proven guilty. Or, better
yet, allow adults to buy and consume whatever drugs they choose, so
long as the drugs aren't mislabeled. The US is supposed to be a free country. There have been large numbers of drug overdoses only because
the concentration and the composition of the drugs hasn't been clearly
and accurately labeled. Let every CVS sell USP heroin.

But what about the billions of daily scam calls to unwilling victims?
What's the alternative?

* Every American just has to put up with an interruption every ten
minutes, forever? Or rather until greater automation results in
scam calls every ten seconds instead?

* Americans just have to give up using telephones?

* America will pay tribute to Modi in return for a promise to leave us
alone? It worked so well for Ethelred when he paid the Vikings to
leave the English alone.

Technological solutions work. My cell phone screens out nearly all scam
calls; it's weeks between ones that get through to me without being
marked "scam likely" before I have to answer, and even those aren't
numerous.
--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com
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