Have you ever been catfished?

I’m so glad you figured it out quickly.

Yes, it’s happened to me. Sometimes it’s serious, but most of the time, it’s just a pain in the rear.

I got scammed from Microsoft and Amazon Prime. I lost access to my emails and they won’t let me unsubscribe to their services. I get ripped off $25 a month. The sad part is I don’t get Amazon Prime unless I want to order another subscription. Also I don’t have acccess to Microsoft Word.

I called my credit card provider and Microsoft and Amazon , for many hours, and they are no help.

I’m getting pretty regular text messages from bots trying to seduce me, offer me a job, and/or just get me to say anything to add to whatever database.

I’m thinking about trying to get them into a multi-user text conversation with each other . . .

@RedDeerGuy1 That’s not catfishing. Didn’t you forget your passwords?

Not really, I kind of presumed the vampire gang werent real and may have catfished them back for fun. :)

@RedDeerGuy1 Did you ever get them to stop charging you?

@smudges No. I forgot my passwords and username, and lost access to my emails.

On the positive side Canada might have passed a anti-auto renewal legislation in November. I don’t know if it passed or is dead on arrival from the election soon and pyrouging (sp) of Parliament.

I did try to get Microsoft Word back and was billed $99, plus ~$10–20 monthly fee. Then my computer crashed during an update.

I was frustrated, and gave my computer away to the repair guy.

Prorouging (sp).

Canada might have passed a anti-auto renewal legislation in November

How is that good news? You don’t have a vehicle do you?

When I was 18 I matched with another 18 year old on a dating app.

After a while of talking he revealed he was 32, but preferred younger women because “every woman his age has STDs”

@RedDeerGuy1 You have to cut off payment via your credit card, or cancel the credit card and get a new one, and then you will be unsubscribed to Amazon because they will close your account. I know you had posted about this about a year ago and we were all giving you advice.

Once you stop payment, they will close your Prime account lickety split.

It makes no sense when you said you were on the phone with your credit card for hours and they were no help. Tell them you want to stop the payments to Amazon. Period.

My first thought to answer this q was the Jelly who told everyone he was a sea captain in the Caribbean. I wasn’t romantically involved with him, just friends like many other Jellies, but I heard there was a Jelly who was interested in him and was planning to visit him or some crazyness, but then he died and the story got out. Weren’t we (or most of us) fooled by the photos he posted and his tales of the high seas? It sounds very silly now but a lot of us were astounded at the time, because we trusted him that he was telling the truth. Some of us were friends with him on FB and in hindsight, he never posted his photo in the boat and sea pix, just random pix but nothing with any identifiers in them.

@jca2 They said that I cannot use them to cancel a subscription.

@jca2 That’s right. He fooled us all. And there was another guy earlier; StrangerinastrangeLand whose stories were fantastic and he proved to be bogus.

@RedDeerGuy1 No, but you can stop payments on your card, or cancel the card totally.

A few years ago (Maybe 6 or 7 years ago), I was at work on Facebook at the end of the day, and I received a friend request from someone who had two mutual friends. I was high up in the organization I worked for, and the two mutual friends were high up in affiliated organizations, so I figured ok, he must run in our circles. The person who friended me had on a military uniform with a lot of bars on it. After I accepted his friend request, he pm’d me within a few minutes and was very chatty. I googled him (because he was a four star General or something like that), and he was the highest ranking person in the Army, in charge of the Afghanistan conflict or something like that. One of the phrases he used in one of his messages struck me as not very “General-like,” something like he was chilling or some other very casual phrase.

I was leaving for the day but I was quite baffled. Why would this high ranking man who no doubt goes to fancy dinners in Washington DC and sees many politicians want to be friends with me, a person with a very ordinary life? I was leery. When I got home, I googled his name with the word “scam” after it and all these sites came up with how this name is a common one for scams. I immediately unfriended him and blocked him. I didn’t bother telling the two friends that are mutual friends that he’s a fake, but my boss had also received a friend request from him, and when I told her, she blocked him too.

I was grateful I never gave him personal information or details.

A few years ago, I was returning from a road trip to Virginia with a friend and my daughter. My daughter was about 12 at the time. The ride took all day and my daughter was in the back seat playing with her phone while I chatted with my friend. I noticed my daughter was doing a lot of texting and she was not texting a lot with other friends during this period. I asked her who she was texting with, and she said a new girl from school. A bit later, I asked her what this new girl’s name was and she said “Alice.” I asked her about the girl, and I told her to show me the phone so I could see the photo the girl sent of herself. The photo was so obviously fake. She told me the girl told her that tomorrow is her birthday and the girl was asking for gift cards for i-Tunes and some other stupidity. She told the girl she wouldn’t even know how to buy them and she had no way of getting to the store. I had to explain to her that this is probably someone in India or Africa, who is texting 100 people and telling them this bullshit, and maybe if a few believe it and send her (or him) gift card numbers, it’s worth their time. I said who’s name is Alice? Nobody is named Alice now (lol). I got pretty mad at her (and I’m typically a laid back parent) and I told her that I warned her in the past about people online – this person got in touch with her though some gaming site – and I asked her if she ever hears me asking my friends for specific birthday presents. I said no, but this person is a fraud and you have to immediately block them, and she did, but it was a lesson.

I’ve also warned her about “girls” who will get in touch with her through gaming sites and may be some old perverted fuck who is chatting like he’s a girl just because he wants to talk to young girls, and it’s bullshit, don’t talk to these people, don’t trust them.

A long time ago, by a Liberian banker!

Well I heard from Donny Osmond the other day!

I have catfished all of you.

I am actually a 75 year old man and living in the UK.

I cosplay as an American 24 year old. It’s fun.

;;^ No way you’re a Boomer!

No, though I do remember some of the classic Fluther catfishes. I don’t remember ever being taken in by them. It seemed their fakery was more about living out an elaborate fictional life online than it was about scamming specific people.

There was a similar case on a “gay teen forum” I posted on back in the day (boy, those were the days). The guy posted elaborate stories about his love life and these attractive photos of himself. It turns out in reality he was a pasty, overweight nerd and the stories were all fictional. But because he owned up to it and started being honest about himself in the wake of his “outing”, the community welcomed him back. It was also just easier to catfish back then. Nowadays we have reverse Google-image search which can find a lot of those deceptive photos…

Not directly.

I thought the ersatz sailor was authentic, but I never got involved with him.

I decided to totally avoid him when he went on a baseless rant against against a jelly I really liked, and on another one against parents who didn’t rear their children in compliance with his rules of gender “norms”.

@Brian1946…I loved the ersatz sailor. He told wonderful stories. From the beginning I knew they were just stories. He was making them up.
I don’t remember any confrontation. Do you have a link to it?

Here’s the link where it starts: https://www.fluther.com/201733/why-would-the-russians-prefer-trump-to-clinton/#quip3386094