I get regular ones about my Amazon account. I know they are fake, because I have never had an Amazon account. I am perhaps in the front line, because I run a business, (tiny business) the, "We can upgrade your website and get you more traffic." ones are perhaps the most annoying. The ones that pretend to be from the gas/water/electricity companies the most dangerous. Though I had to laugh a the crude fishing attempt by one I used to get often, who described himself as being from. "Your service provider."

Suspend a Social Security number? I received one of those 2 years ago. A Social Security number cannot be suspended. The very concept is ridiculous.

Several years ago, the FBI legitimately called my father looking for my sister because her ex-fiance had skipped parole (long, long story) and they didn't have a record of where she'd moved in the several years since they'd parted ways. So, although it may be unlikely that anyone from a federal office will call, it's not unheard of. Regardless, we exercised caution and replied only because the agent had left enough information to indicate that it was about an actual case we were familiar with, and we didn't volunteer any information without some confirmation first — and, if I recall correctly, we took down his information so we could pass it along to my sister, who merely confirmed that she'd had no contact with her ex. More recently, my father received some communication about changing a Medicare identification number and needing to call the IRS to authorize a change — or something like that — and I thought that sounded like a scam, but it was legitimate (although I chewed my father out for taking action without fully understanding what was being requested, because it could have easily been a scam). My general action when replying to something that I can't easily verify directly is to contact the department indirectly through their public contact information (800 number, website, etc.) and checking the legitimacy of the contact that way, and checking online sources for scam alerts. Fortunately, it hasn't happened often to me where that's been necessary.

I have noticed an uptick in scam calls in the last few days, and posted something on my neighborhood listserve about it. Wouldn't you know I got about 50 replies from people, all saying the same thing. The scammers are more prevalent than ever these days.

Every government agency including the IRS and bank have been screaming out loud for over 10 years that they never call. It has been over 10 years and they have done massive communications on it.

Why did you return the call?

Thanks

I generally don't answer calls from numbers not in my phone listing(contacts List)...