The Telephone Ambush Predators! Are you safe?

[oldbadger]

https://who-called.co.uk/Number/03453003900

Telephone scamming is as old as telephones. I fully expect that before telephones the deceivers sent their scams via smoke, flag or drum beat, and when we read about folks who have freely given out their personal details and codes because they 'really believedl' many of us do tend to think that we could never be fooled like that. Until we are fooled like that.....

If you think that you are safe from any kind of scam, ask yourself, 'Could I instantly and easily explain any and every conjurer's trick?' If you could then you might just be safe, but if not.......

The new scam here (UK) is a call claiming to be from Her Majesties Customs and Revenue Service, warning that prospective victims are about to be investigated for tax fraud and to please answer a few questions. So, obviously, the person called might end the call and then either check the number that called and/or press 'ring back'....?

Guess what? The number that the scammers use is REAL! The number shown above in the link really is an HMRC number. So when the thieves call back a few minutes later, a higher % of prospective victims will believe that the caller is genuine.

It's all about percentages, if you can throw in a couple of truth-pills then the % of successful steals will rise.


But calls cloaked in genuine numbers, now that's different.......

 

[exchemist]

https://who-called.co.uk/Number/03453003900

Telephone scamming is as old as telephones. I fully expect that before telephones the deceivers sent their scams via smoke, flag or drum beat, and when we read about folks who have freely given out their personal details and codes because they 'really believedl' many of us do tend to think that we could never be fooled like that. Until we are fooled like that.....

If you think that you are safe from any kind of scam, ask yourself, 'Could I instantly and easily explain any and every conjurer's trick?' If you could then you might just be safe, but if not.......

The new scam here (UK) is a call claiming to be from Her Majesties Customs and Revenue Service, warning that prospective victims are about to be investigated for tax fraud and to please answer a few questions. So, obviously, the person called might end the call and then either check the number that called and/or press 'ring back'....?

Guess what? The number that the scammers use is REAL! The number shown above in the link really is an HMRC number. So when the thieves call back a few minutes later, a higher % of prospective victims will believe that the caller is genuine.

It's all about percentages, if you can throw in a couple of truth-pills then the % of successful steals will rise.


But calls cloaked in genuine numbers, now that's different.......

Thanks for circulating this. As you say, one can always get caught out by some new trick one is not primed to expect. So very useful to send round details of new scams, to help us all keep our guard up.

I have to admit that I am so used to scam calls now that I treat ANY call I am not expecting as suspect. When the phone goes, my first thought is "Now who could be wanting to speak to me today and at this hour?" If I can't think of anyone, I approach the handset with suspicion. The only trouble is that this can give a slightly paranoid impression to my friends and relations!

 

[ChristineM]

Cheers, i will let my British contacts know about this.

I have a few ploys to help fight unsolicited calls.

Im in france on an Orange phone, they provide hidden number blocking. Very handy tool. When i lived in the uk it was not an option on my BT phone, i don't know if it is now but it should be.

They also filter out know scam numbers.

If the call gets through the number is shown on the phone. If its a number i dont recognise, for english numbers beginning +44 ill speak in french until i know who the caller is or they hang up on frustration. If its i french/german/italian/belgian etc i'll speak english with the same result.

Also, don't have your number published in phone books.

In the UK
BT help page on getting yourself ex directory.
How do I sign up to ex-directory services? | BT help

Also sign up with TPS
https://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html
"The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a free service. It is the official central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales or marketing calls. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS unless they have your consent to do so."

Of course scammers wont bother with legalities but it reduces unwanted calls dramatically and if one does get through then you'll know its a dodgy one.

 

[oldbadger]

Thanks for circulating this. As you say, one can always get caught out by some new trick one is not primed to expect. So very useful to send round details of new scams, to help us all keep our guard up.

I have to admit that I am so used to scam calls now that I treat ANY call I am not expecting as suspect. When the phone goes, my first thought is "Now who could be wanting to speak to me today and at this hour?" If I can't think of anyone, I approach the handset with suspicion. The only trouble is that this can give a slightly paranoid impression to my friends and relations!

Me too! I can't think of anybody who needs to call me.... except for my wife.

I have a friend who stares at his mobile when it rings, and he often says, 'So who is this, then?'. I always reply that if he would just answer the call then he would find out!

I always answer calls quickly...... the excitement!

 

[oldbadger]

Cheers, i will let my British contacts know about this.

I have a few ploys to help fight unsolicited calls.

Im in france on an Orange phone, they provide hidden number blocking. Very handy tool. When i lived in the uk it was not an option on my BT phone, i don't know if it is now but it should be.

They also filter out know scam numbers.

If the call gets through the number is shown on the phone. If its a number i dont recognise, for english numbers beginning +44 ill speak in french until i know who the caller is or they hang up on frustration. If its i french/german/italian/belgian etc i'll speak english with the same result.

Also, don't have your number published in phone books.

In the UK
BT help page on getting yourself ex directory.
How do I sign up to ex-directory services? | BT help

Also sign up with TPS
https://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html
"The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a free service. It is the official central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales or marketing calls. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS unless they have your consent to do so."

Of course scammers wont bother with legalities but it reduces unwanted calls dramatically and if one does get through then you'll know its a dodgy one.

Thankyou for the valuable extra info.

Wow.......... so you're multi lingual?
French sounds so...... sexy, when spoken softly.
But when a cafeteria Madame is telling me off for sitting at her street table before actually purchasing a coffee the language sounds somewhat more brutal!

 

[exchemist]

Me too! I can't think of anybody who needs to call me.... except for my wife.

I have a friend who stares at his mobile when it rings, and he often says, 'So who is this, then?'. I always reply that if he would just answer the call then he would find out!

I always answer calls quickly...... the excitement!

Yeah with the mobile it displays the number so I aways take a second to see if I recognise it before answering. But I don't have a number display on the landline handsets around the house.

Instead I have a technique of answering it, not with my name, but with the last 4 digits of the number, prefixed by an imaginary telephone exchange, e.g. "Fremantle 7653?", as we did in the 1960s. That usually puts a scammer off his stroke, because he then has to ask who he is speaking to, which I can counter by asking who he is, who he represents and whether I have done business with his company. The aim is to buy enough time to suss out his accent and general approach. By this point it is usually obvious who is a scammer and who isn't.

 

[ChristineM]

Thankyou for the valuable extra info.

Wow.......... so you're multi lingual?
French sounds so...... sexy, when spoken softly.
But when a cafeteria Madame is telling me off for sitting at her street table before actually purchasing a coffee the language sounds somewhat more brutal!

English and French, enough of 3 more languages and i can order food in 4 more.

French is a language of love but i don't know much about madames ;-).

But i assure you, french is not so sexy when spoken in a Lancashire accent

 

[BSM1]

Caller ID. one of the best inventions since AG Bell. I actually had one come up as "probably fraud" on my caller ID last week. Almost answered anyway out of curiosity...

 

[Revoltingest]

I keep getting calls wherein some gal speaks Chinese at me.

 

[Trackdayguy]

Scam calls a a huge problem here in Canada. I have over 400 names in my phone book and if it rings and it isn't one I know I let it go to voice mail.

 

[Nakosis]

https://who-called.co.uk/Number/03453003900

Telephone scamming is as old as telephones. I fully expect that before telephones the deceivers sent their scams via smoke, flag or drum beat, and when we read about folks who have freely given out their personal details and codes because they 'really believedl' many of us do tend to think that we could never be fooled like that. Until we are fooled like that.....

If you think that you are safe from any kind of scam, ask yourself, 'Could I instantly and easily explain any and every conjurer's trick?' If you could then you might just be safe, but if not.......

The new scam here (UK) is a call claiming to be from Her Majesties Customs and Revenue Service, warning that prospective victims are about to be investigated for tax fraud and to please answer a few questions. So, obviously, the person called might end the call and then either check the number that called and/or press 'ring back'....?

Guess what? The number that the scammers use is REAL! The number shown above in the link really is an HMRC number. So when the thieves call back a few minutes later, a higher % of prospective victims will believe that the caller is genuine.

It's all about percentages, if you can throw in a couple of truth-pills then the % of successful steals will rise.


But calls cloaked in genuine numbers, now that's different.......

The thing is the US is that they can hack the number that shows up as the caller. I've have a few call backs from people I've never called claiming they are calling me back. They do this to show a local number as the call back. Heck I've even had a call from myself once.

My rule is unless I know the person, never believe the person on the phone is actually who they claim to be. Never agree to any purchases over the phone. Never provide personal information over the phone. Remember, there's no guarantee a phone conversation is private. My Dad who worked for the telephone company had a device that could listen to private, wireless phone conversations. It was simple enough for me to use at about age 12.

 

[oldbadger]

Yeah with the mobile it displays the number so I aways take a second to see if I recognise it before answering. But I don't have a number display on the landline handsets around the house.

Instead I have a technique of answering it, not with my name, but with the last 4 digits of the number, prefixed by an imaginary telephone exchange, e.g. "Fremantle 7653?", as we did in the 1960s. That usually puts a scammer off his stroke, because he then has to ask who he is speaking to, which I can counter by asking who he is, who he represents and whether I have done business with his company. The aim is to buy enough time to suss out his accent and general approach. By this point it is usually obvious who is a scammer and who isn't.

Love it!
Because my wife and self both had mobile phones since a long time ago, and because I retired from serious work in 2010, that's when we got rid of our landline telephone and our landline, altogether. Since then we've relied upon our mobiles and a 'dongle' for internet connection. We've never regretted getting rid of the landline.

I am looking forward to the day when I can connect my mobile to my laptop for internet connection and so get rid of the dongle connection charges. As for computer security, we have one laptop for all of our data and photos gathered over the last 18 years, and one empty laptop for internet connection. We don't worry about bugs and virus attacks because our internet laptop is empty of any docs and pics.

 

[oldbadger]

English and French, enough of 3 more languages and i can order food in 4 more.

French is a language of love but i don't know much about madames ;-).

But i assure you, french is not so sexy when spoken in a Lancashire accent

Amazing......... you people who can just change languages like that.
Eastern Europeans and Scandinavians around here can speak several languages as well. I'm stuck with English now, I'm afraid.

 

[oldbadger]

Caller ID. one of the best inventions since AG Bell. I actually had one come up as "probably fraud" on my caller ID last week. Almost answered anyway out of curiosity...

The thing is, this thread is explaining that these scammers have cloned a genuine government (Customs/Revenue) number so that it will come up on your caller ID screen. That's new (to me) and really dodgy, because if you ring off and check the number, discovering it's 'genuine', then you're more likely to respond more positively when the scammers make their second call a few minutes later. These barstewards are getting very very clever.

 

[oldbadger]

I keep getting calls wherein some gal speaks Chinese at me.

Well speak Chinese back then!

Just keep saying 'Ding!', 'Ding!' 'Ding!'

'Ding' is short for Ding Hao' which means 'OK'...... so it could go like this...

Chinese gal ,'You want to send me money?'
Revolting, 'OK!'
Chinese giorl,'You send me lots of money?'
Revolting, 'OK!'
etc....

 

[oldbadger]

Scam calls a a huge problem here in Canada. I have over 400 names in my phone book and if it rings and it isn't one I know I let it go to voice mail.

Cool........
I get so few calls now that I answer everything. The scammers get so bored trying to get details out of me that they clear off and put me on their stop lists!

 

[Revoltingest]

Well speak Chinese back then!

Actually, that's what I do.
I explain in Beijing hua (Mandarin) that I don't speak Beijing hua.
"Wo bu hui shuo zhonguo hua. Wo shi tai bunle."

 

[oldbadger]

Actually, that's what I do.
I explain in Beijing hua (Mandarin) that I don't speak Beijing hua.

I like that....

Many Brit companies use Asian call centres in order to cut costs, which must increase their losses immensely because of the customers that they lose through this policy. All those university degrees thinking up all these bright ideas.........

 

[oldbadger]

Update......
I got the second call yesterday morning....

A second call is essential when villains are using a cloned government telephone number.

Most people would end the first call and then check the number to see who really called, then discovering that the telephone number is genuine and therefore that the call probably was real.... Shock horror!

And so the prospective victim is worried (to some extent between mild interest towards frantic fear) but doesn't want to actually do anything about the call. In this case, where prospective victims have actually been hiding their incomes to evade paying taxes you can well imagine what % of these folks will be worried.

It's when they see that genuine (but cloned) number ringing again that they are really concerned, and when the auto voice ends it's 'you are being investigated' message and asks the caller to press one to speak with a Revenue Officer, that's when the villains are expecting the highest % of positive responses.

In fact, a % of responses will actually press 'one' and when answered will admit that they might have overlooked income at some time in the past, and ask if the call is about that.

It's hard for people who consider themselves to be intelligent and sensible to actually believe that victims can be so easily beguiled, and this helps the telephone bandits even more, because every victim feels so foolish that many will not report their losses.

I wonder how many victims this scam has gained from? And because it's hard to catch such pro-scammers I wonder whether the authorities spend much time in seeking them out?

All that anybody can do is warn as many people as possible.