Pat gets a suspicious no-prize for bringing us news of yet another "social engineering"-style attack on your privacy:

The scammer calls claiming to work for the local court and claims you've failed to report for jury duty. He tells you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest.

The victim will often rightly claim they never received the jury duty notification. The scammer then asks the victim for confidential information for "verification" purposes.

Specifically, the scammer asks for the victim's Social Security number, birth date, and sometimes even for credit card numbers and other private information — exactly what the scammer needs to commit identity theft.

We haven't been hit by any sort of scams at our house yet, but that could be because we have caller ID and just flat don't answer the phone if we don't recognize the caller. I hate the phone so much it's hard to get me to answer it even when people I know are calling. However, I could definitely see this one as being more likely to succeed than some others.

The more you know, etc.