I heard that the FTC put a stop to those asinine “car warranty” calls that we’ve been receiving regularly since 2018 or so. But it seems that there’s a new auto-dialed scam going on today and I’ve had two voicemails today that consist of a (1995-era) computer-voice:

Hello, this is Amazon. You have a charge of $499 but we have found some suspicious activities in your account while processing the payment so in order to cancel your order kindly press one to speak with Amazon fraud department thank you.

Did I answer it?

Of course not. Voicemail.

Is it Amazon? Nope. Reminder: a company’s fraud department isn’t going to call you to discuss anything about suspicious activities.

It’s a war-dialer — an auto-dialer. The source is masquerading from an Area Code that matches my phone, and that may, for some, look legit…but I haven’t lived in that area code for about eight years. With the exception of a few known-numbers of friends, any other call is most certainly a scam.

Also, it’s something of a fringe benefit of just keeping one phone number wherever I go. I can easily recognize a scammer.