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It is so sad to lose someone who always held as his primary goal and responsibility to help others. Rest In Peace, Woody.

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sunshine warm upon your face.
May the rains fall upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

And may his soul reside at the right hand of God

 

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DrBonzo, jrp2706, Myst, Cybertooth

I had an experience similar to @TechTango. A couple years ago I needed a copy of my certified long form birth certificate and discovered that I could order it online via my state’s Department of Health website. They used a reputable company to verify the identity online of the person making such a request and offered a link (button) to click on to take me to that company’s website for identity verification. After going through the identity verification process and completing the online order for the copy of the birth certificate, I wrote down the toll-free telephone number for calling to check on the status of my order at a later date. Typical of my state, the estimated processing time for completing my request was five months. When I didn’t receive the document five months later, I called the number I had written down to check on the status of my order; but I later discovered that I had gotten the last digit of the telephone number wrong when writing it down (one digit off).

I called the number I had written down and was cordially greeted by a gentleman with an Asian subcontinent accent who said he would be happy to check on my order status after verifying that I was indeed the same person who placed the order in the beginning. As requested, I provided my name, address, telephone number, and last four digits of my social security number, thinking that none of that data would be a problem for anyone to have. But he then insisted that he would need my credit card information that was used when first placing the online order, saying that no one but the person placing the order would have that information. I resisted giving him my credit card info, but he reminded me that I had already given them that info before when I placed the original order, and he was only asking for it to see if it matched the original information provided in order to ensure that I was indeed the one who placed the original order.

Reluctantly I provided the requested information and was placed on hold while he checked on the order status. Within less than a minute I was transfered to a different number offering some merchandise to order over the phone that I had no interest in. I never heard from that gentlemen again and eventually hung up the phone. Smelling a scam, I logged onto my credit card account online, locked my card account, and also reported the card as lost or stolen. The full charge for the birth certificate order had already been processed months earlier, so I wasn’t concerned about the card number changing.

That same night and the next two days someone attempted about a dozen charges against the credit card number I had provided, all for a little less than one hundred dollars each; and all were rejected because the account was closed. All of the attempted charges were trying to process through an iTunes client account. None of the attempted charges were allowed to complete; and I received my birth certificate about a month later.

So apparently the scammers see legitimate toll-free numbers for real businesses or other organizations and then claim for themselves other toll-free numbers if available that are one or two digits different from the real legitimate ones so that they can pretend to be the same business or organization when people call for help but make the same mistake that I made. My cell phone service provider does not allow the person placing a call to pause more than two seconds between pressing numbers on the keypad when typing in the ten digit telephone number being called. If you pause too long between pressing numbers while placing a call, you have to start over, because after two seconds it tells you that the call cannot be completed as dialed. Sometimes this causes you to rush the dialing process, and you can easily dial the wrong number. In my case I had simply written the number down wrong from the original order screen. All’s well that ends well; but I increasingly find myself wanting to kick myself for my lapses in judgement as I move into my advanced years (now nearing 76), caveat emptor.

 

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TechTango

I think PeterJD above may have just answered this question, so I’ll try his solution. I have an android 13 smartphone, an android 14 tablet, and a windows 23H2 touchscreen 17″ HP Envy core i7 laptop, as well as a chromebook running the latest version of the chrome operating system. The two android devices plus the chromebook can be completely powered off for 72 hours and not lose more than one percent of total battery capacity charge after being off that long. However, the windows laptop will lose 10% of total battery capacity charge for each 24 hours that it is off and unused with rapid boot and sleep and hibernation all disabled. This after a full windows normal log off and shut down where nothing should be using any battery resources. If the laptop is charged to 100% and then shut down and off for 72 hours, it will have only 70% of battery available when it is then booted up. My android smartphone only uses that much battery in the same amount of time elapsed when it is fully on and running in an idle state with the screen off, and its battery is less than one-fourth the size of the laptop’s battery. The laptop has always been like this since purchased new only two years ago. I will check to see if changing the bios setting for always on usb ports solves the problem; but I’m inclined to believe that it’s just HP and their cheap (probably refurbished) laptop batteries.

 

As an ordinary home user with three desktop computers, a laptop, and a chromebook, a tablet, and a smartphone, and only an in-home wi-fi network with cable isp internet (no vpn, no gaming, no Office software, no cloud), the only thing I noticed while online Friday was that I could not sign into either my electric utility company account to check my new account balance (the bill was generated that day) or my cell phone service provider account (home based in Oregon). Both websites would only display the home screen; but trying to log into my accounts failed and displayed one of those “we’re having technical difficulties, please try again later” message screens. Both work fine today, even though they were both still down last night, except that my actual electric bill monthly statement got lost in the shuffle yesterday. The amount due is displayed, but the actual statement says “not found.” I assume they will recover it somehow. I’m on paperless statements. Neither my bank (a large Northeast regional bank covering several states, principally NY) nor my cable TV/Internet service provider (Spectrum) were affected. I was able to log in to both online accounts without any problems on Friday. Different business entities use different security software providers. I’m glad my bank doesn’t use that one.

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Deo, Cybertooth