Anyone know who "qqlonutz" on Uplay is?

[Dweller_Benthos]

Got a friend request from this person, sound familiar to anyone? Pretty much anyone here I'm already friends with on there, so not sure if it's someone I know. Might just be a random person, if so I'll just decline.

[LowPolyOWG]

Definitely spam, if you got that. I got the same thing too. Deleted it.

[PZ]

No one I know appreciates spam of any kind which begs the question: "if everyone hates spam, why are spammers still in existence?"

The only reasonable answer is that there are large numbers of dim-witted people that succumb to that kind of advertising, it is just that we do not know anyone like that.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I figured as much, I'll just refuse it.

Spammers live on dumb people and mis-clicks. Dumb people think the *bleep* they send is real, and normal people face palm and say, "Dang, I meant to hit delete!!!"

[PZ]

Indeed, but way more than just online - the telephone solicitations are endless - now they have started using your area code, and the same prefix as your phone number in an attempt to "neighbor spoof" you into thinking it is someone you know. These criminals are probably preying on old diminished capacity people.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yep, fake numbers that are really close to yours so maybe you think it's someone you know, or even a family member who has almost that exact number. These people need to die in a fire.

[mandru]

There have been a couple invites pop up while I've been playing in a Steam game that I have turned down.  I would expect an OWG member to send me (here on site) a personal message to make such a request and warn me that their Steam account user name varies from how I know them here.

As for phone spammers (spits), a couple days ago I had a series of probably twenty persistent incoming calls over the course of the day ID'd as "Apple Corp".  Ironically Apple is a company that I detest and do not and will never own any of their products.  The 5 calls that came in from them while I was trying to take my afternoon nap gave me even more reason to hate Apple. 

I've even had my own phone number show up in the caller ID in an obvious call from a spammer. 

[Art Blade]

never heard of qqlonutz (what a mouthful) and I'd delete/decline, too. I generally decline anything I don't know unless I was contacted before by someone who'd have told me the name was different. Even then, I don't accept just anyone. If you are a friend of mine and can see my friends list, you'll notice that they're essentially all OWG members except just less than a handful other people. Also, I tend to toss garbage after a while (people on my list who never say anything, never contact me and so on) because I don't see why I would want to have a ton of people on my list I don't even remember. So I delete them. Only one of them noticed AND asked me to put him back on. Someone else told a friend of mine who told me and I put him back on, and to him I explained why I had kicked him off the list. Now I get pinged once in a while, he probably doesn't want to get kicked again

As to marketing/sales phone calls, they're not allowed here, we have laws. You need to ask permission first and only then you may call that person. If someone I don't know calls, usually some market research institution, I tell them that I never gave permission and should I ever see their number again, I'd take legal steps -- they never call again. Also, I've never heard of fake numbers calling, we probably have some protection in place. Here in Europe, we're damn strict regarding personal data and privacy. I hear that for instance FaceBook wants to copy our laws (yet they want to modify some of them) because they're the strictest in the world.

[BinnZ]

In Holland we do have these annoying phone calls. But we have a simple  way of getting rid of them; the "don't call me - register". It works very simple. You go to this site and subscribe with your phone number. Then check that you don't want any of a certain type of calls and you're safe. I love that option. After registering there, they never bothered me again.
Usually these bitches call during diner or when I'm at w0#k, where I can't answer the phone. And most annoyingly, they call anonymous. I never answer anonymous calls anymore anyway

And no, that nametag doesn't ring a bell

[PZ]

Unsolicited spamming is also against the law in the U.S. For any U.S. members that do not know this, donotcall.gov is alive and well, and you can register your number there to prevent spammers. I did this in 2006, and the number of calls dramatically decreased. It is now illegal to call unless a few criteria apply:

• You gave them permission to call
• It is some kind of emergency warning
• Some charities

When I asked why I am still getting these spam calls, especially the neighbor spoof ones, the answer is "those spammers do not obey the law." On the positive end, recently such a spam company was fined 120 million dollars for spamming.

You can also report the spammer number on donotcall.gov so they can investigate and hopefully add to the governmental budget with millions in fines.

[Art Blade]

nice

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I'm on the don't call list as well, though I think it may be time to renew, just to be sure. I think NY state also has their own list, I'll have to look. But there are a few loopholes, aside from charities, that let some people call you, under the pretext of something else, and they are technically breaking the law doing that. I'll have to start making note of phone numbers, though I'm sure they are fake or spoofed, or they just lift a thousand real numbers from a directory and use those. Reporting them would just be reporting someone's number who has nothing to do with it, and just had their number used without them knowing.

[fragger]

We have something similar for phones, only we call it "call blocking". It allows you to ensure that companies and charities can't call you unless you specifically allow them to. Unfortunately, phone-scam artists (usually from India) still get through by calling from public phone numbers, which call blocking can't do anything about.

I get so sick of answering the phone only to hear some Indian mispronounce my surname then tell me they're calling from Microsoft, Telstra, the Australian Taxation Office or some other rubbish (as if the ATO would be calling me at 6:30pm, or indeed, at all...) Of course the objective is always the same - try to talk the "mark" into allowing and setting up remote access to their PC, so the scammer can then make a pretense of "removing malware" while they rummage around on the person's PC for things like banking details and passwords.

I don't even yell at these scumbags anymore, I just hang up. As soon as I hear that mispronunciation of my surname in an Indian accent (which Indians in particular always get wrong, for some reason - nobody of any other nationality says it the way they do), that's it. I get these blasted calls at least once a day on average, usually when I'm right in the middle of something. These people are a blight.

Anything that pops up in my emails from anyone or anything that I neither know nor recognise goes straight into the bin.

[nex]

Got a friend request from this person, sound familiar to anyone? Pretty much anyone here I'm already friends with on there, so not sure if it's someone I know. Might just be a random person, if so I'll just decline.

It might be the same joker who tried it with me while I was playing Wildlands, I just ignored him

[Dweller_Benthos]

So now I'm getting a whole bunch of people in the "friend recommendations" list that Uplay has. Don't know where that is coming from or what criteria you have to have in order for you to be on that list for someone else, but it's pretty much a useless feature if you ask me. I have no idea who anyone on there is.