The phone calls seem to be a bit rife at the moment.

For the car accident ones I reply when asked about when I had the action.. 1973.

For the national insurance ones, an american social security number,

and best of all for the bank a random set of numbers for a swiss bank account, which I tell them is locked because of fraud.

Home address is several times removed, and I never answer the phone with my name.

Being powerless to stop these cheats and being retired with plenty of time, I regard it as my public duty to engage them as long as possible during which time they cannot attack the more gullible.

Indeed - that's what I occasionally do if I feel in the mood and can spare the time. More of their time wasted with me means more time (and thus) money spent by them on a fruitless task and less time availble to try and rip off the actual unsuspecting.

One of these oiks tried (and almost succeeded) in ripping off my parents (in their late 70s and barely computer literate) by pretending to be from 'Microsoft'.

I tell them it takes some time to go to another room and switch on my computer (I don't - just continue reading the paper usually) which takes a long time to warm up (it doesn't). Then there is the long drawn out effort of an elderly slow old man painstakingly typing in stuff in the search box - balancing the number of frequent 'mistakes' against the dogged persistence of the Indian accented caller, ensuring he doesn't realise he's the one being duped. Eventually, at the umpteenth question 'what do you see on the screen' I usually say something like - 'three words, they don't seem to make much sense. I'll spell them out for you......AlphaLimaEchoRomeoTango (remembered from flying days long ago) EchoVictorIndiaLima India(apt)NovemberDeltaIndia(ditto)AlphaNovember. When the rupee eventually drops the response varies from just a click, or a torrent of abuse. The last one was the most amusing - he told me to type p o r n h u b into the search box.

There's a ready-made 'oldie' bot called 'Lenny' just for this purpose. It drives these people nuts (I've heard it in action via YT videos) - absolutely hillarious!

Sometimes I'm even tempted to use the 1471 number and input it into a dodgy website (as long as I don't get hacked) - i.e. giving one set of criminals another's contact details. Either that or the phone number of the Serious Fraud Office or someother law enforcement agency.