Scam Calls and Emails Are Costing People More Than Money and Time ⇥ washingtonpost.com

Heather Kelly, Washington Post:

Pamela McCarroll doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring phone calls from unknown numbers.

The 30-year old is undergoing treatment for long-term colon cancer in Fairfax County, Va., and never knows whether it could be a doctor, a hospital with test results, or someone trying to schedule an appointment.

Unfortunately, that means she’s fielding up to 20 spam phone calls every day on her mobile phone, adding to her already sky-high levels of stress. Since her diagnosis in August 2019, the number of scam attempts has shot up while the topics have gotten strangely specific, including Medicare or senior benefits.

It is infuriating to see how marketing networks exploit vulnerable people on both sides of a call to make some extremely dirty money. We all lose.