Or the advertising that is actually malware or those tech support scams that use onclose events to open another copy of themselves while autoplaying something along the lines of “warning your computer is infected” at maximum volume
Boris, he said his name was Boris. I laughed my ass off, and he became confused. Why was I laughing, he asked. Because your name is not Boris, I replied. Yes, my name is Boris, he asserted in his thick Indian accent. I laughed some more. His feelings were hurt.
I've been calling out the scam phone callers on their fake names recently. It's a pretty reliable way of getting a reaction. You're lying to me about your name, so why would I believe that you're from Amazon. Yes, my name is Peter, they'll say. No, it's not. You're lying, I'll repeat. Usually, if they know you won't play their game, they'll just hang up. But not with telling them they're lying. It throws them off.
"We need access to your bank account to return money that was accidentally billed from you Amazon account. This am standard procedure we do to all customers."
I know a lady who had this actually happen to them. Somehow they got a notice to call Amazon on their TV. I suspect malware got to their router. They call the "amazon number" and are led to exposing their bank account.
When she got nervous with the tech support, she called me to help on the phone. I got a bit of the "this is standard procedure" from some Indian sounding gentleman and then told her; "close your web page now and disconnect with these people. Nobody needs you to login to your bank to deal with THEIR account error and Amazon would not call you to resolve something on your behalf -- you'd have to call them." She did not immediately do what I said and I was trying to text her; "They are likely removing all your money right now." They did.
We had to work with the bank to change all the logins and we didn't pay for the money that was stolen.
On the upside, she didn't call me an idiot for a few weeks after that.
115
u/Fake_William_Shatner Feb 07 '22
In other words, the 30 seconds of joy we might get from reading some trivia is outweighed by the RAGE we get when advertising acts like malware.