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So here and there I am undertaking to do a thing I was asked to do, by my father in law.
He gets just heaps....endless piles...of mail. Mostly junk, mostly solicitations for money. Well, he did get taken by a scammer a few years back, but scams now are sophisticated. Nobody is going through your trash looking for your name and address. It's all online and phone now. But anyhow, his paranoia about scams is that he thinks you need to either use a marker to black out your name and address from every single piece of mail you receive, or shred it. All of it.
He's been sending bags of it to me to be shredded.
OK, well my first thought was that this was a waste of time, but I'm doing it anyways. It makes him happy. Tell you what though, the good thing is, if he just hands all of this crap to me without opening it, then there is some really real value in this. Because the true risk is that he'd open it and look more closely at it and get persuaded to send money to these shysters for the many things they swear he needs to do.
The Indian School needs your money for Christmas presents for the adorable Indian children. (With greeting cards enclosed featuring little cartoon Native kids as angels. I shuddered.)
Won't you think of the immigrants and migrants workers? And their poor children? Won't you save the animals? The pets of the homeless? Floyd the donkey! Who was abused (insert graphic detail of donkey torture here.) Just $20/month could care for his hoofs, oh won't you think of the hoofs??? Is it really hearing loss, or is it just earwax? 20 secrets every senior needs to know about using a cell phone! Every congress critter from both parties needs a generous donation right now, or the country will surely be destroyed by the other side and their heinous agenda! Buy these rare coins or regret it forever! The chance of a lifetime comes every other day in the mail, if the coin people are to be believed. One for his wife who passed five years ago, saying that AARP has determined she could really use a gym membership at a fantastic discount.
You know, no matter how they get disposed of, just...yes, please let me take all of this away, far away from your kitchen table, Dad. Please. Thank you. My god.
My neighbor was out of town and I was collecting his mail for him. Apparently he donated to some political candidate, so now he is on every political mailing list. What is interesting though is that they are now sending him money. Sometimes its two nickels, some times is half dollar coin and once it was a dollar coin. But in the course of of the 10 days out of town that I was collecting his mail, there was probably 3 or 4 political solicitations with some change included to get you to donate.
My neighbor was out of town and I was collecting his mail for him. Apparently he donated to some political candidate, so now he is on every political mailing list. What is interesting though is that they are now sending him money. Sometimes its two nickels, some times is half dollar coin and once it was a dollar coin. But in the course of of the 10 days out of town that I was collecting his mail, there was probably 3 or 4 political solicitations with some change included to get you to donate.
I hadn't seen that before.
Yep, father in law gets a half dollar every month from some police organization that he has never donated to, but since he's old, has money, and has donated to other things, well...they are hopeful, I guess. He has a pretty big pile of these half dollar coins.
I pulled 8 cents in change out of one of the mailings today. It was the Indian School one. I figure, you know, my own take on this, is that if an organization is putting free address labels or change into every piece of junk mail that they send out, then they don't need any of my money, and they're hardly focusing on their charitable purpose with the money that they get. Heck with 'em.
But everyone should know to keep an eye out for Neilson surveys. They will put one or two actual dollars into every piece of mail that they send. They'll select your household to do a survey about what radio stations you listen to, and I will always go ahead and fill out the things that they send, because the last time I did it, I dunno it was like a total of $20 or something, it was not small change, and it didn't take much time. But even if you don't want to do the survey, the initial mailing even has a dollar or two in it.
So here and there I am undertaking to do a thing I was asked to do, by my father in law.
He gets just heaps....endless piles...of mail. Mostly junk, mostly solicitations for money. Well, he did get taken by a scammer a few years back, but scams now are sophisticated. Nobody is going through your trash looking for your name and address. It's all online and phone now. But anyhow, his paranoia about scams is that he thinks you need to either use a marker to black out your name and address from every single piece of mail you receive, or shred it. All of it.
He's been sending bags of it to me to be shredded.
OK, well my first thought was that this was a waste of time, but I'm doing it anyways. It makes him happy. Tell you what though, the good thing is, if he just hands all of this crap to me without opening it, then there is some really real value in this. Because the true risk is that he'd open it and look more closely at it and get persuaded to send money to these shysters for the many things they swear he needs to do.
The Indian School needs your money for Christmas presents for the adorable Indian children. (With greeting cards enclosed featuring little cartoon Native kids as angels. I shuddered.)
Won't you think of the immigrants and migrants workers? And their poor children? Won't you save the animals? The pets of the homeless? Floyd the donkey! Who was abused (insert graphic detail of donkey torture here.) Just $20/month could care for his hoofs, oh won't you think of the hoofs??? Is it really hearing loss, or is it just earwax? 20 secrets every senior needs to know about using a cell phone! Every congress critter from both parties needs a generous donation right now, or the country will surely be destroyed by the other side and their heinous agenda! Buy these rare coins or regret it forever! The chance of a lifetime comes every other day in the mail, if the coin people are to be believed. One for his wife who passed five years ago, saying that AARP has determined she could really use a gym membership at a fantastic discount.
You know, no matter how they get disposed of, just...yes, please let me take all of this away, far away from your kitchen table, Dad. Please. Thank you. My god.
I think it's touching that he trusts you to do this. He doesn't sound like a super trusting guy. And I agree with your skepticism about all the various causes that want money. Except maybe Floyd the donkey
I think it's touching that he trusts you to do this. He doesn't sound like a super trusting guy. And I agree with your skepticism about all the various causes that want money. Except maybe Floyd the donkey
He is and he isn't (trusting.)
I remind him (and my husband) of the late wife/Mom. She was so loved that I'm getting a boost of trust and affection from that basic fact. I thank her departed spirit for this, and wish I could have met her.
Also, partly because of this age difference between my husband and I, although my husband is no slouch when it comes to modern things (he's actually a lot more connected with contemporary music and media than I am for instance) I do know more about the tech details of modern computers, cell phones, wifi networks, etc than he does. Well, let's be fair, I raised two boys who are now young adults, and somebody had to do immediate tech support on any of their devices that malfunctioned or there would be screaming. Ex husband, too. I had to get in there and fix things before they got smashed in anger. So I learned some stuff. I am not an expert, or a genius, but I've got pretty solid "keep all this stuff working" skills. And because I work an office job and we do get security training every year, I also know about the latest in tricks that the scammers use to try and get past security, by exploiting the gullibility of users. I can spot a phish from a mile off.
So all of this, which is just basics for many adults of my generation and who work with computers anyways, is "impressively smart" to my husband and "genius level sorcery" to his father.
But I feel like he sometimes trusts where he shouldn't, and is paranoid where there is no need. This thing with the mail is unnecessary. So many grifters already have his address, I can easily find it on Google, it's "out there." Obliterating it from the printed mail he gets is pointless. But he needs to find a way to ignore ads for nutritional supplements and a handful of other things that have persuaded him to engage. He trusts that "doctor" on TV who swears that this capsule is the key to eternal youth.
And of course I'm over here more angry all the time at these evil bastards out to fleece the elderly.
Oh, the award for the silliest junk mail went to a letter from "The Society" which promised to send him free materials that would use "science" to make him a rich rockstar Casanova who could rub elbows with the world's elite, seduce any lover, and drive all the best cars. With the very secret secrets. And also science. Said letter rambled on for four entire pages front and back. And in every paragraph was something more ridiculous. I'm keeping it.
Is he getting caught by the phone scammers? My parents were worried about the abusive East Asian Indian guy who pretended to be from the IRS. I got them an answering machine to screen all of their calls so they didn't have to engage robocalls. But my mom didn't feel comfortable initially just ignoring phone calls.
Is he getting caught by the phone scammers? My parents were worried about the abusive East Asian Indian guy who pretended to be from the IRS. I got them an answering machine to screen all of their calls so they didn't have to engage robocalls. But my mom didn't feel comfortable initially just ignoring phone calls.
He does ignore a lot of calls from numbers he doesn't recognize.
That was how he got scammed, though.
At one point he'd actually done some legitimate over the phone tech support on his computer, that he initiated and properly paid for. So when a man called him claiming to be Microsoft tech support and patiently instructed him to give over access to his computer... He thought it was the same people he'd actually dealt with before. It wasn't.
Is he getting caught by the phone scammers? My parents were worried about the abusive East Asian Indian guy who pretended to be from the IRS. I got them an answering machine to screen all of their calls so they didn't have to engage robocalls. But my mom didn't feel comfortable initially just ignoring phone calls.
We told Mrs. Chow's mom to never buy anything or give out her credit card to someone on the phone and to second guess anyone from a company she doesn't recognize and to call us right away.
Too many old people get scammed.
There's a handful of things that just grind my gears. While it's not rape or murder, people scamming old folks and scam artist in general really gets my ire up. Again, I know in grand scheme it's low level crimes, but it enrages me disproportionally all the same.
He does ignore a lot of calls from numbers he doesn't recognize.
That was how he got scammed, though.
At one point he'd actually done some legitimate over the phone tech support on his computer, that he initiated and properly paid for. So when a man called him claiming to be Microsoft tech support and patiently instructed him to give over access to his computer... He thought it was the same people he'd actually dealt with before. It wasn't.
That explains a lot of his lack of trust. That makes a lot of sense. I think his junk mail fear is that he under estimated one risk, so now he has increased his vigilance everywhere.
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