Page 3 - 11Cyber

dollars.
(Continued from page 1)
Eventually, the company went bankrupt.
The piece notes the contracts sold were legal. But if you
tried to cancel the service, your patience was taxed to So that's the end of the extended car warranty robocalls,
right? Not. Exactly.
the max.
NPR reports, "It's been ten years since US Fidelis went
NPR says the standard operating procedure was to force
customers to talk to six or seven people to cancel. Then, bankrupt, and now these auto warranty calls are back
while speaking to that individual, the company would with a vengeance. But unlike with US Fidelis, many of
purposely terminate the phone call. Then the customer these calls do not name the company calling you. So,
while the federal government tries to figure out who ex-
had to go back through the process all over again to try
and cancel their service. actly is calling, you will continue to be robocalled and
asked about your car's extended warranty."

Read and hear the NPR story here.
More stories:

FCC - Combating Spoofed Robocalls with Caller ID Authen-
tication

FTC says hang up on car warranty robocalls

Car Warranty Scam Robocalls: Here's Why You Get So
Many (And How to Stop Them)

It turns out despite all this, the company called U.S. Fi-
delis was doing very well. According to NPR, "One of the
owners spent $26 million building a mansion with a
bowling alley and all these secret rooms and this weird By Jim Cerny, Forums Coordinator / Instructor, Sara-
walkthrough shower that was kind of like a car wash for sota Technology Users Group
your body."

By 2007 or 2008, the complaints began piling up. Since You probably are all aware of those awful spam
word was getting around that U.S. Fidelis customers emails that come to you in your inbox. But recently, I
were quite unhappy, the company turned to a new way had a very sneaky and tricky spam email that ap-
to promote itself: robocalls. peared to come from a friend, and I need to tell you
about it so you can be very careful.
By one estimate, U.S. Fidelis sent out one billion ro-
bocalls pitching its product – in just ten months.

As tempers flared and unlucky recipients of these phone First, I received a brief email from a friend of mine
calls fumed, more than 40 states began going after U.S. who was also listed in my contact list, but I found out
later that the source email address was not really
Fidelis and its robocalls. NPR reports U.S. Fidelis was his. It “looked” like his, even having his wife’s first
banned from robocalling. In addition, dozens of news name in it, but it was NOT his email address; it was
articles, TV and radio news reports, and Internet news from a different email provider, which he never used.
stories blasted the company. Finally, U.S. Fidelis custom- Yes, that was tricky all right, but later that week, I
ers vented during news interviews. They were red hot received one even worse. The email sent to me ap-
angry. peared to come from another friend and, being very
careful, I “hovered” my mouse on the email address,
Tales of families sitting down for a nice evening supper and it did show his actual email address, exactly as
interrupted by these robocalls surfaced. it is entered in my contact list! But it was NOT from
him. Fortunately, I called him, and he confirmed that
Folks who could hardly afford to buy these so-called
"extended car warranties" were spending hard-earned (Continued on page 4)

Cyber Awareness Bulletin 3 October 2021