Congratulations

A system that is broken or misaligned, be it social, economic, cultural, technological, or otherwise.

Spam/Scam calls or messages seem to cover them all. Social systems of shame among family & friends are overcome & broken by economic realities. Local politics engage in human trafficking, often of entire communities, forcing them into the trade. (If the first three numbers of a 13-digit phone number are “234”, the call originates from Nigeria where, for many, such call centers are simply a fact of life.) Where law enforcement would love to be able to bring practitioners to justice (India is a prime example), lack of resources causes it to break down.

In the United States, law enforcement seems resigned to do little more than warn us not to get taken, then sadly shake their heads when someone does. Phone services offer call screening, but they catch only a fraction. Online services offer virus, scam & fraud protection for a price, & still they get through.

And so, they keep coming, relentless & ubiquitous. Today I have fielded no fewer than eight of them just as incoming calls on my phone. I’ve quit trying to keep track of all the emails & text messages I receive day after day after day. I used to have fun messing with them, but lately it’s just been ignore, block & delete.

Until two days ago. A thought had been playing around in my head for a while. A very playful thought. Yesterday, I decided to try it out, simply improvising. I got my first call &, before I could stumble through the second paragraph, he abruptly hung up, seemingly in a panic.

Within seconds I had another call, I guessed it was from his supervisor. I barely got to the second paragraph when he terminated the call.

Perhaps I was on to something. I developed a script. Feel free to use it.

Congratulations!

By dialing this number & waiting for a response, you have just downloaded a small, discreet & virtually undetectable virus to your system. It’s not a Trojan. It’s a full-blown failed prophylactic. Even now it is busy replicating itself into half a billion redundancies across your system as well as every system with which it is networked. It is too late to stop it. You might as well listen to the rest of this message so you will understand what you are up against.

As an enterprise that has been deemed a public nuisance at best & most likely criminal, you have been chosen as an early recipient for this combination counter-terrorism/social-engineering project.

What does it do? I’m glad you asked! Even now it is downloading all your files (including system files, registries & histories), to the FBI as well as its counterpart within your own country of operation. Agents are already working with local law enforcement to bring you down & bring you in. Within a matter of days, you will find that all assets of the organization, its known affiliates, & its employees have been frozen &/or seized.

It is highly recommended that you quarantine this device immediately, as well as any with which it is connected. You are welcome to attempt to diagnose & remove the virus, but you should know that those attempts are likely to prove futile. All major anti-virus companies are partnering with law enforcement in this elegant little endeavor. They, too, have grown weary of your activities.

Please note that from this time forward, any contacts you make with others will cause the virus to be downloaded to their system. It will be triggered whenever spam/scam calls are detected as proceeding from or entering into their system. Any calls so detected will activate the virus, either to download into the offending system or to trigger the offloading of all files to law enforcement. Should such contacts continue without abatement, the virus will cause your system to overheat, frying all hardware & rendering all data unusable.

Warning: in rare cases, this may actually cause a fire, that risk increasing exponentially with each additional piece of hardware with which it is networked.

In other words, cut it out, get a real job, & quit harassing & attempting to fleece those who can ill afford it. Better yet, contact the local authorities & inform them of the activities of your office, identifying particularly those most responsible for them. The higher up the chain of command, the better. Your cooperation may improve your final disposition with the authorities.

Have a good day.

After those first two improvised attempts, I went over twenty-four hours without a single scam/spam call! Twenty-four hours!!!!! I can’t remember the last time that happened.

This afternoon, they started up again. Eight of them total. I haven’t even come close to getting through the second paragraph before they terminate the call. I’ve tried tweaking the script to persuade them to listen to the entire thing, so far without success.

But I’m having fun trying.

And no, there is no virus. As per the exchange between Jeffrey Sinclair and his security chief Michael Garibaldi in the Babylon 5 pilot, “The Gathering”:

Garibaldi: “Do you think they’ll ever find that transmitter you slipped G’Kar?”

Sinclair: “No, because there isn’t one.”

Garibaldi: “Commander, do you have any idea the tests they’ll put him through, the things they’ll do to him trying to find a transmitter that isn’t there?”

Sinclair: “Yes.”

Having friends who have lost everything to these operations, I relish the thought. Perhaps more than I should, but I do relish the thought.