Who in the heck still falls for these scams?

[HeyMikey]

Wait, what do you mean that it’s a scam? Oh crap.

[Glennwillow]

Both my wife and I just got scam calls today from someone pretending to talk like a computer telling us that all of our Social Security payments are being immediately stopped, blah, blah, blah.

Wow...........

- Glenn

[Tico]

Don't know whether it's true, but I heard once never to say the word yes if you do speak to these people.

They can record you and can edit your voice into a conversation to make it appear you are answering, "Yes" to questions you'd never say yes to.

Example, "Do you agree to X?" ... X being something that benefits them but harms you.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Oh, and IMO George Carlin was a genius!!!

[C-ville Brent]

There are so many frustrating things about this. I think you're right that many scammers are located outside the U.S. which makes an already difficult problem even more so. Never saying "yes" if caught up in a conversation with these low lifes is also good advice. Arggh!

[Imbler]

I've read that these scams like the Nigerian scam are made deliberately obvious to weed out all but incredibly stupid people. That way they don't waste their time setting up the actual scam with a person that would catch on part way through when they had invested their time.

[tbeltrans]

I, too, agree that it is likely most of these email scams come from outside the US. However, I also believe that there are plenty of folks within the US looking for ways to scam you via the internet. A lot of the scammy phone calls sound as if they are from other parts of the world, especially from India, such as those posing to be a Microsoft representative wanting access to your computer to "fix" it. My point is simply to be careful all the time with these folks. When you are scammed, it doesn't matter where they are from, you are simply scammed.

The poster who expressed concern about identify theft as his primary concern is, I think, put his concern in the right area. It is relatively easy for most people of average intelligence to spot a scam, but identity theft is a whole other story.

Tony