There's a new telephone scam going around, and boy, is it terrifying.

What the scammer does is steal the phone number of somebody close to you and call you using that number. They then claim that they are holding that person hostage and if you don't send them "X amount of money" within a certian time that the person will be shot.

Now, it's highly unlikely that this phoney has taken your friends and family prisoner, but just in case, ask the scammer a few personal questions about their "hostage". Ask them about eye color, religion, pet's names, how many children they have, etc. Chances are, they'll simply hang up after that.

You can also ask them false questions if you still can't get rid of them, such as asking if the hostage has brown hair when they really have black hair or something similar. The creep will probably answer yes, and then you can prove they're a fake.

Yeah ! That's the worst thing i've heard. Horrible.

There is also another "similar" one we had at our house recently. They told us a family member had been in a car accident and when we asked "Who?" They hung up. Then they rang again ...

Our response was "We know this is a scam, "WHO" was in a car accident ?? >_>" ...they hung up again.

Yeah. Nope. I agree with asking them questions. Lol.

Once I was scammed telling me my internet was compromised and they could see it. I spent ages on the phone with them pretending I didn't know if my computer was a windows or mac. Fun times.

I do the same thing with those "Your computer has a virus!" scam people. We ended up talking about Arizona for a full fifteen minutes.

Actually this scam sounds more sophisticated than the ones I've had.

Do they know that you're friends with, say [sally]???? So like, will they ring you, and tell you that Sally is hostage? Or will they ring and say 'a friend' is hostage?

If so, how do they know that you're friends with [sally] :0. Like if they already know your friends with [sally] then its kind of scary, but if they don't know anyone just say 'who?'

Like, these hackers/scammers are using "Sally's" number, so it looks like they stole and are calling from "Sally's" phone.

Found an article on it...
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/virtual-kidnapping

my gosh that's terrifying

i agree to asking them questions, they might just be some hobo who wants monies and if u ask a question they dunno the answer to, they'll probably give up

Something like this happened to my teacher once, she told us about it while warning us about scams

It went something like this

Caller: We have your daughter, if you dont give us (somewhere over 1 thousand dollars) we will kill her (or something like that)
Teacher, whos only daughter is currently sitting next to her: Uh huh... sure