Spammers and Scammers

I got an email alert about those spam comments yesterday but, when I got here, they weren't here. Then I looked in the spam file and, sure enough, there they were. I thought that the Blogger Machine had redirected them there, but now I see that it was Old Dog who did it. You done good, Old Dog. I understand that putting them in the spam file is better than just deleting them because it helps train the Blogger Machine to recognize spam messages. I deleted everything in the spam file while I was there, figuring that Blogger was done with them. Maybe I should have left them there for awhile, but no matter, I'm sure we will see other stuff like that from time to time.

Neither my hypothetical wife nor I have a cell phone, just an old fashioned land line with none of the special features like caller ID. We get our share of spammers and scammers and here's how we deal with them: If it's a live person we say "Shut up and leave me alone!", and then hang up. If it's a recording, we press "1", which usually gets us to a live person, who we then tell to shut up and leave us alone, and hang up. If pressing "1" doesn't get us a live person, my hypothetical wife just hangs up, but I like to push all the buttons over and over again until they hang up. My intent is to confuse their machine. I don't know if it works or not, but it makes me feel better. Funny thing about those nuisance calls, we don't get any for days at a time, and then we get half a dozen or more on the same day.

There is one insidious scam out there that you should know about if you don't already. Somebody will claim to be from Microsoft or Windows and tell you that they have detected a problem with your computer. Then they will try to get you to set up a "remote session" with them, which means they can take complete control of your machine. Once in control, they will put all kinds of garbage on your computer and it will require professional help to straighten it out. Truth is, Microsoft will never call you like that unless you call them first, and then they will assign a case number to you and always reference it in future calls. I had a couple of those going on back when I was struggling to learn Windows 10. Since the legitimate Microsoft people spoke with the same accent as the spammers, I wrote my two case numbers down and left them by the phone so we wouldn't inadvertently tell the nice people who were trying to help me to shut up and leave us alone. One day my hypothetical wife answered the phone and asked the caller, "Is this about one of my husband's case numbers, or is it just bull shit?" The caller replied, "It's bull shit." and hung up. (I'm not making this up!)

I looked up moral particularism last night on Wiki. it sounds like just common sense to me, although I wouldn't go so far as to say there should be no rules at all. I think you need some kind of guidelines when you are in an unfamiliar situation, but then you should have enough sense to deviate from them when necessary. It's like I told one of my school bus passengers: "The rules are supposed to be based on common sense. If you have common sense, you almost don't need the rules but, if you don't have common sense, all the rules in the world won't do you any good."