Ring, Ring — It’s a Robot
What You Can Do to Protect Yourself From Phone Scams and Robocalls Two of the most common scams are phone scams and robocalls. These calls are incredibly annoying and can trick you out of valuable information if you’re not careful. While it might seem like these scams are inescapable, there are some precautions you can take to avoid their traps. that the number works and that they should try again. Once your number is confirmed as active, it often gets put on an “active number” list that can then be sold to other scammers who market in these types of phone numbers. If you can’t verify who is calling without picking up, don’t answer. Let it go to voicemail. If it’s important, the person will leave a legitimate message and you can respond afterward.
Give them the silent treatment. One thing you can do to avoid these fraudulent, time-wasting calls is to simply hang up. If possible, it is best to not answer at all. It’s always good to have a list of numbers you can reference, so you never have to guess who is calling. Think of it as going one step beyond caller ID.
Put up some deterrents. You can even go a step further and block the calls. Many phone service providers offer call-blocking options, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. You can sign up for this service in-store or on your service provider’s website. Each service costs about $4 per month. There are also a number of call-blocking apps available on Android and Apple devices, but if you subscribe to a blocking service through your phone provider, these apps are unnecessary. Finally, you can sign up for the Federal Trade Commission’s “Do Not Call” program (DoNotCall.gov). While the Do Not Call program can help cut back on calls, this list is largely ignored by scammers. If you’re getting a ridiculous number of robocalls every day, signing up can offer you some brief respite. Thankfully, Congress is already attempting to fix this problem by making it harder for scammers to call you. But until they are able to pass tough, effective legislation, it is up to us as consumers to remain vigilant and do what we can to keep our personal and financial data safe and secure.
In some cases, answering and then hanging up can actually do more harm than good. Answering the phone gives the scammers confirmation
Illogical Like Us
MARKETING CAMPAIGNS THAT SHOULDN’T WORK, BUT DO
If I tried to sell you a cup of coffee for $5 when you knew full well that you could make yourself a cup of coffee at home for mere pennies, would you do it? It sounds crazy, but perfectly sane people do it every day when they opt to get their morning brew from Starbucks, Dunkin’, or their favorite local coffee shop. We take this occurrence for granted, but it’s worth pondering why something so illogical would work as a business model. Many people believe customers buy products for logical reasons. They couldn’t be more wrong. Sometimes, maximizing sales works less like science and more like magic. In Rory Sutherland’s new book “Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life,” he writes that people often buy a product because of what it represents, rather than what it is. In order to successfully market a product, it can’t hurt to know a few ways to turn perceived meaning into profit. Take Ikea, for example. Why would you buy a piece of furniture that you have to build yourself when you could buy a similar piece already built? It would certainly save you some effort, but Ikea’s founder Ingvar Kamprad
found that the effort of putting your furniture together actually added to its perceived value. We love the product more for having helped make it. This has since been labeled the “Ikea effect.” Sometimes people value some level of control over convenience. Take Wikipedia, for example. One reason it’s so prolific and successful is because each page can be edited by users, not just certified experts. There is a level of control users can enjoy on Wikipedia more so than with other sites. And that’s how one website got users to write thousands of pages of content for free. People don’t always look for what’s simple or convenient. We don’t make sense like that. So, if your business isn’t taking off or your products aren’t flying off the shelves, maybe stop looking for a solution that makes sense, and instead, try to find one as illogical as us.
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