Email Scams, Telemarketing, and Identity Theft

[Sam Golden <samsonspecial () gmail com>]

I know this is off topic, and probably not quite as juicy as SCADA, but it
points to what I fear may be a growing problem.

I have had my home phone number in the National Do Not Call Registry,
https://www.donotcall.gov/, since it's inception and I have received few if
any telemarketing phone calls.

Within the last week, however, I have received more than a dozen calls.
After brushing the first few off, I became curious and started to ask the
callers why they were calling me.  The results were startling.

Each of the first three callers I asked stated that they had received an
email from me requesting that they call me.  Knowing that I hadn't done so,
I asked for the email address.  They stated they received an email from
Goldensaaaa () gmail com.  This apparently legitimizes their calling me.

Now, while telemarketing is annoying, it started me thinking about the
implications.  Anyone can search various public archives such as 411.com and
find a phone number for a name.  Anyone can create a gmail account as long
as they can read the "captcha".  Is some "evil" telemarketing company hiring
lots of people to generate lots of mail accounts and then offer these to
faux-legitimize telemarketing phone calls?

It doesn't stop here, however, the next call I received was the result, so
the caller said, of "me" requesting information from a web form on their web
site.  Not true!  Is this the result of an "evil" telemarketing scheme as
well?

I just signed up for credit monitoring as I suspect I will need this next.

Should I be paranoid?

Regards,

Sam

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