8349/21268
Walking Wolfie this lunchtime and I got a call from a mobile number that I didn't have in my contacts. I pretty much only get rung up by scammers these days, but I always answer, because I am alone and I hope that I can scam them in return, into becoming my friend.
A slightly foreign sounding female voice greeted me, but the accent was impossible to pin down.
"Is that Richard Herring?" she asked, though she pronounced the name in a weird phonetic manner and it sounded vaguely robotic like it was being autotuned, but sometimes that can happen on a call. I was 100% certain that this was a scam call, but a little surprised that they knew my name. Usually these things are a lot more general.
She didn't sound quite human and yet she seemed to respond to what I was saying. It's possible that everyone says more or less the same thing, but of course, now, with AI, it's equally possible that the software is able to answer you in real time.
She told me she was calling about cryptocurrency and that she was sorry to tell me that I had been locked out of my account. It's a shame their excellent work in finding out my name and my number didn't extend to discovering it I was the kind of person who would have cryptocurrency. Or maybe they were banking on me being the kind of person who if someone mistakenly thought they had cryptocurrency, would go along with it. I'd think I was conning them, but of course they'd be conning me.
Is anyone who is savvy enough to have invested in cryptocurrency, stupid enough to not understand the most basic of phone cons. What am I talking about? People bough the Hawk Tuah girl and Donald Trump's cryptocoins. This was an open market full of gullible idiots.
I wished the pretend woman a good day and hung up. It was just another day in the modern world, but I was a bit freaked out that whoever had my number had my name as well. What else did they know about me?
Of course it's pretty basic if you've hacked a mailing list to have the name and number and email address of your mark, but maybe if the voice had been a tiny bit more human (it wasn't far off) and the subject matter a little more pertinent or if the AI had been impersonating someone that I knew....
It's a scary future out there for the kind of trusting and lonely and stupid old person that I am bound to be. Why don't I just give all my money away to anyone who wants it?
Let me know if you want my money.
All you have to do to take advantage of this offer is donate £5 a month here. This money just ensures that you are a legit person. You can't be too careful these days. When a year has passed I will transfer all my crypto currency to you.
