We got Scammed

[ReSTored]

Our VOIP Ooma phone software is set up to permit callers in our contact list to ring through or leave a message. Ooma defined known and suspected spam callers get a continuous ring. Other calls go to voicemail. These other call voicemails are about 50% legitimate and the balance are scammers of some sort. All voicemails get sent to our email as an audio file. There are very few of these a month. Any legitimate business needing to get in touch with you will leave a voicemail. Have been using this software setup for over 7 years with no issues.

 

[TourNut]

I let my machine answer, scammers generally don't leave messages . If I don't know the very few that will leave a message , including the landline Caller ID info , I rarely will answer a phone . & since cellphones have so little reception here , mine is never turned on .

 

[drrod]

Your article (first one) said this 'hang up delay' only works on a land line. That last term has changed - a land line here for a long time was a Ma Bell phone line - over copper wires. Land lines today are over fiber or coax and are VOIP (voice over internet protocol). I'm speaking of common usage here in the US, where copper phone lines are pretty much a dinosaur and have been replaced by VOIP. On the old networks (copper), if one hung up and received a dial tone, the other party was gone, but this changed somewhat until VOIP took over.

What do you have in Canada?

Both articles I linked are years out of date. From what I understand, it doesn't matter what kind of phone you are using, there are programs available that will keep the line "open" even though you hang up.

 

[red one]

I just don't do any business if its not face to face. Still have my old cell flip phone and believe it or not i get very few scammers on it.

 

[ibike2havefun]

Curious to know how you manage this method. Are you always adding and deleting contacts?

Not at all. I'm in the fortunate position of not doing a lot of business over the phone and, as a retired person who's not running a business of my own, there's little obligation or incentive for me to answer the phone when an unknown-to-me number calls.

There are perhaps a dozen or so businesses in my Contacts list. Among them are all of my health care providers, a few favorite restaurants (which never call me; I call them), the local pharmacy, my favorite woodworking supply store, and a few others. These are the businesses that I either call more than once every twenty seven years or that are known to have a legitimate reason to call me periodically, and whose calls I want to take.

I do, in unusual circumstances, do as you describe and temporarily add a number when there's some sort of reason to expect that they'll be calling but once the transaction's completed it usually gets deleted unless I believe I may need to talk with them again.

There was a period, five or six years ago, where I was getting between 20 and 30 junk calls a day, mostly during business hours. Since I was sitting in a cube farm, I was more-or-less forced into keeping the ringer turned off to avoid annoying my colleagues and fellow cube-farmees. That has carried over and evolved into my present strategy and I now receive on average less than one legitimate call a week. The rest can go to blazes, for all I care.

I also find that I do much more day-to-day informal communicating, as for example with the neighbors as well as groups of past colleagues, by text message than by voice call, giving me all the more reason to keep the phone part of my phone mostly closed to incoming communications.

 

[Terminator2]

I thank God weekly that i rarely get scammer calls. I've had my cell phone #..........27 years. I'm not bragging. Honestly, I'm wondering what MY secret is?

 

[bdalameda]

Interesting that this just came up. I just got a call from my bank. Apparently my wife's bank credit/debit card got hacked. They noticed a couple of large purchases at Ticketmaster and flagged it. We are going through all the pain of changing credit debit cards and getting new pins etc. right now.

 

[SMSW]

I guess I'm confused, how does an order for more services from your legitimate provider benefit the scammer? Also, how does sending you a bunch of iPhones benefit the scammer?
Does the scammer work for your provider and get a commission on what they upsell to you?

The scammer sent in two bogus orders. The first increased our bill from 100/mo to $250/mo. The second was for 3 iphones w/ premium packages of data and unlimited calling. I think the first was supposed to catch our attention. The second order (for phones) arrived 3 or 4 hours after the first. Two business days later, on the day of expected delivery of the phones, the Scammers called me to tell me a shipment of iphones that I had not ordered, would be arriving that day and I was to call them as soon as we got the package. Because of his accent and my bad hearing, I gave the phone to my wife in the middle of his spiel. He then repeated the instructions half dozen times to her (she got fed up w/ him very quickly) and he gave her the same number to call as the first guy who called us. This identified him as the scammer. He said he would send a mailing label to affix to the package and we could drop it off at the shipper's store. I called our provider and talked to a guy in the Fraud Dept. He said the bogus label would send the package to an abandoned storefront or house where the scammers would have a guy waiting. That is how they get the phones.

We think the first order was designed to be caught and the second was supposed to be unnoticed until the phones were shipped. Our provider was very efficient. I saw the email arrive, I read it, and immediately called them, waited on hold for only a few minutes, and explained what had transpired to a new Fraud guy. He put me on hold to check if the phones had been shipped. He came back on the line and said yes, they were gone from their shipping dept.

 

[ST1100Y]

I thank God weekly that i rarely get scammer calls. I've had my cell phone #..........27 years. I'm not bragging. Honestly, I'm wondering what MY secret is?

Not surfing on shady sites, refraining to enter all your personal information on unsecured ones... (still doesn't prevent that costumer databases get sold or stolen by hackers...)

Smartphones are very vulnerable these days, receive a text or email like "parcel carrier XYZ has problems with a shipment for you, follow <link inserted> to correct/confirm..."
Open that link and your phone is infected with malware, collecting and uploading your bank-data, contact info, etc... simple to clone it then...
I guess I'm one of the few paranoid enough to:
- have solid security/anti-virus/browser protection software on my phone (bundle for PCs + phones... even running one on my smart TV...)
- refuse to have any banking app on it (despite banks urging all & everyone to use it); computer only, with cardTAN unit... screw convenience, I want security...
- refuse to run over the ISP's modem to begin with; their WiFi gets disabled upon first startup, patch/NAT-ting to my firewall router, static IP's on my intranet...

New trend are spoofed sales adds on Amazon, eBay and similar platforms...
Yes, the goods do exist, but on another seller's account, so they take your payment, order at the real seller with your data, get away with your cash and leave you with the original money demand...

Fake police calls to elderly people... your grand/son/daughter has been in serious accident, needs XXX-thousands for hospital/bail, we send officers to collect...
There already cases where AI fakes the voice of family members, voice samples are readily avail on social media... best to agree on a secret secure word or phrase for such cases...

 

[Oldbikefixr]

I deliberately kept this out of my first post. I don't like the fact that I too use a caller's accent to make a quick determination about the legitimacy of the call. What is worse, we have received spam calls by callers with Hispanic accents.

To me, this kind'a sums up one of the world's greatest ills. Too few 'significant' employment opportunities relative to the planet's population. No attempt to correct the situation by fearless leaderships which are historically quite willing to sprinkle a few crumbs now and then. Of course many are going to take on jobs like tele-fraud...the income helps somewhat. They are simply doing what their systems permit.

 

[Gerhard]

I don’t think there is anything new about fraudsters, it use to be the guy getting a deposit to paint your house, patch the driveway, new windows….. after the deposit never to be found again. Now technology is cheap enough for them to contact thousands of people to find on live victim so they can scam you where you live without being near you.

 

[aniwack]

My uncle got the "Windows Security" scam on Wednesday. He's got Parkinson's and dementia. The only reason I knew it was happening in real-time is I remote manage his PC with my UDM Pro. I nuked the partition his windows was on just because he allowed the scammer to remote in with anyconnect bypassing my lockouts. There was too much danger of not knowing what the scammer had taken or installed.
We used to have family discussions about taking away car keys. Now we're having that for computers. What has this work come to??

 

[SMSW]

We used to have family discussions about taking away car keys. Now we're having that for computers.

Can you secure certain apps, like restricting a child's access to some websites? Or does letting someone remote 'byass my lockouts' unconditionally? Maybe get him a used computer wiped clean of any sensitive data to be used for browsing only?

 

[Sadlsor]

I continue to have to educate and train my wife to delete / ignore these scammer emails and texts. Checking the domain name in emails or text links for bank-related phishing attempts, as one example.
Fortunately, my bank texts me to call their fraud department with suspicious charges on my credit or debit card, and their legit phone number is in my Contacts and they match. If that makes sense; in any case my bank has texted me 3 times in the last year to verify suspicious charges, 2 of which were fraudulent, 1 was legit.

 

[drrod]

Attached is a blow by blow account of what happened to a couple that we know. Good account of what people are up against and how they can get scammed.

 

[Larry Fine]

 

[mello dude]

I keep getting emails from ---- service@paypl.xxx -- telling me my account is frozen.. Obviously its not from paypal.... and I use a different email for that account.
HEADS UP PEOPLE. Jeez, dont click that email address!

 

[DannoXYZ]

For home, I use DNS-blocker right after router that filters out list of known bad guys like “paypl.xxx” so traffic never makes it to any device on network, even if you click on that link. Also blocks most ads as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi-hole
https://pi-hole.net/