Poyais

A few months ago, I woke up after a long sleep-in to find A looking a bit confused. She had just received a phone call from “Microsoft” who had detected a problem with our router. At least, it was a problem on our router, or perhaps a problem from our router. Either way, apparently there was some malicious problem with the computer here — which one, they did not say — and they were apparently calling to resolve the issue; in English, no less!

I shrugged it off as complete and utter bollocks, and life went on.

After speaking with my father in Australia today, it turns out he's received a few of these calls too. For him, it was “Microsoft” on Castlereagh Street in Sydney, although with a terrible phone line and some almost incomprehensible Asian accent it could have been anywhere.

The similarity between the two incidents seemed too much of a coincidence — it seems like our friends from the Republic of Poyais have returned.

Scams will always exist as long as the general population of the world remain stupid and ignorant. I attribute any rise in the number of scams to be directly related to the state of the economy — any increase from the “normal” level of scams usually corresponds directly with any economic uncertainty within the market.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last twelve months, you have surely noticed that there is a bit of a problem with the global economy. If you haven't noticed then you must have at least noticed that scams are on the rise; Ingenious as some of them may be, now is a good time to use your brain.