Scammers Use The Word "Yes" Outrageously To Screw You

This is the most outrageous thing I've heard in ages and there's a lot of outrages out there.

We're all used to getting scam phone calls. We generally hang up, but sometimes we respond a bit before hanging up.  

Here's how the Worst Scam Ever works.

You get a call, and it's a recording and it sounds like a real person. Or it really is a real person. The voice asks "Can you hear me?"

Any normal person would say "Yes," if you can indeed hear them.

That is when you're totally screwed.

Consumerist reports that police departments all over the country are saying that the moment you say "Yes," the scammers have a recording of you doing so.

Here's what that means, says Consumerist:

"Even if you never agree to buy anything, you might later find out you've been signed up for a home alarm system, a cruise, some added service for your phone or any other thing you couldn't possibly want. 

If you dispute the charges, the company may take legal action, sticking that recording of you saying "yes" into a recording of a different conversation as evidence that you agreed to the transaction."

There's lots of variations to this scam, says Consumerist. The con artists will use the recording to "prove" that agreed to a number of charges on your credit card whose information they've already stolen.

The scammers in this case might have called you posing as pollsters, asking innocuous sounding questions like, "Do you have a dog?"

These horrible people will often use phone area codes from your area, making it look like the calling is coming from somebody local, somebody you know. That makes you more likely to fall for it.

This "Yes" scam has spread across the country, with police from California to Virginia reporting victims of these creepy con artists who frankly ought to be shot.

Of course, any time you get a phone call from an unfamiliar source or number, you should just hang up quickly without saying anything.

However, this is what pisses me off the most. You have to be so on guard, all the time, no matter what you do and where you are and no matter how distracted you are with what's' going on in your life.

Make the slightest mistake, have the slightest moment of inattention, and you're totally screwed.

Why should we have to go through life so totally on guard?

This is a whine, because nothing is going to be done about this.

Because it's so hard to catch the scammers. Plus regulators and lawmakers are not really into protecting people.

It's commerce after all.  While I'm certain few lawmakers approve of scams, they also don't want to do anything that would make it even a teeny, tiny bit harder for legitimate companies from making money by, say, obeying "Do Not Call" registries.

So, we're in a wonderful world where we always have to watch what we say, what we do, what we with our phones because an army of scammers is out there trying to get us.

Incredibly frustrating.