There are innumerable scams out there designed to get people to voluntarily give up their information and/or money. It's sooooo much easier to send out tens of thousands of phishing emails, for free, and get one or two bites than to try to hack into random computers to try to get profitable information. They don't even try to hack the big corporations directly, they get in via phishing, convincing gullible employees to provide valid login credentials unknowingly. Whatever data is stolen is sold on the dark web, and scammers like the ones here buy it and target individuals. They just need email addresses, but more is always better. They also work telephones, using bots to dial hundreds of phone numbers at a time, hoping for one gull every now and then. They once convinced my mother, who was about 90 at the time, to withdraw all her money from the bank because they would give her a new car in return. I got it stopped in time, but the lowlifes prey on old people almost exclusively, and probably make a good living at it. Just one of the unintended consequences of free long-distance worldwide calls via the internet. I do not answer calls from unknown numbers, but I don't usually have to. Google takes care of that on my Android phone, and all I see are missed calls if I bother to look. Valid callers can just speak when the bot answers, but scammers know about it and just hang up, or else they're busy with the many other calls in progress at the moment. I get on the order of 10 calls/day from spammers/scammers, and I answer none.
