Spam spam spam (part 3)
Got quite the phone call today. If you run a business, you probably know that there’s money in compiling Dun and Bradstreet-type directories. These are exhaustive listings of companies, contact info and accounting data, for sale to all manner of marketers. In order to make the listings work, the companies have to keep them up to date.
The state of the art is to phonespam CEOs of small businesses and ask them a bunch of personal questions. The end result is a (not surprisingly) small response rate.
Today, they resorted to trickery.
The caller informed me that they were a package delivery company and they had a shipment for us, delivered tomorrow. They wanted to confirm the address and such. They asked, “Are you at 145 Palisade Street?” I went along, because of course I wanted my package.
It was only at question 4, “Have your annual sales increased since last year?” that I realized I was being scammed. I started asking questions, hoping to give you a better profile, but she hung up.
I’ll say it again: Tricking people is not a long-term business strategy.