[archie2]

It's pretty bad in Canada - you get really convincing scammers pretending to be our taxation agency pushing you to pay back taxes in iTunes Giftcards.

This is an obvious scam, but for people who aren't up on this and fearful of "the man" I expect these kinds of scams work for every 1 in 100k people at best and are still probably lucrative enough for them to keep going.

The answer for the OP problem and the Canadian problem are the same: the government never calls you, Microsoft never calls you, no tech company will ever call you.

[goldcd]

There was a fascinating story I read (which now I obviously can't find), which explained why spam emails/pop-ups appear to be so bad. It's because the scammers don't want thousands of responses, they want tens of responses from people who'll believe a shonky looking scam is real. Allows you to triage your potential market down to those more likely to complete the second more expensive (needs a scammer) and unbelievable (government wants taxes in gift-cards) step.

[nullc]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

[nerdponx]

the government never calls you, Microsoft never calls you, no tech company will ever call you

And none of them will ever ask for payment in gift cards.