First telephone scam of the year!

[Tim Lamb]

Amazon calling. Apparently someone called David Johnson has purchased an i-phone for £400 on my account! Martin needs me to go to my computer. When I started asking difficult questions, he passed me to his supervisor who pretended to be the same person but claimed the sale was £600. Good spoken English but not native. I wonder if the got my details from the recent Amazon thread. In which case they are going to be disappointed with the long dead demon address:-)

[newshound]

I had a Phillipina, obviously in a huge distant call centre from the background noise and latency, on my mobile a couple of days ago claiming to be "BT calling about your internet". Spoofed to a Cirencester number. Does anyone know if it is even worth blocking such numbers? Do they keep using the same one, or do they change them randomly every time?

[Andrew]

Years ago (pre-computer), people (usually ladies) who worked in accounts were comptometer operators, and sometimes known as 'computers'.

So you should have told 'Martin' that she was out, shopping.

[Adrian]

In message <xM-dnSYIqIdHR5 [e-mail]>, newshound [e-mail]> writes

There is a site (who called me I think) that allows you to log scam calls. Looking at that, it appears that they will make a number of calls from a number, some of which are real numbers being spoofed, others not, which is probably luck of the draw. So no point in blocking them. As with many other things, if it doesn't look right, ignore it. I get them from what are clearly invalid numbers (does any UK number start 06 ?), and I get probably one genuine overseas call a decade (and that will be pre-arranged), so they are now ignored, although I did once get one that turned out to be a friend in Cheshire, who said he was at home, but using a cheap call service.

Adrian

[alan_m]

Last week I had around 12 calls in a day and all used different "local" numbers. I cannot confirm that they were all from the same cold caller because I always let the answerphone pick up calls. Cold callers always seem to hang up immediately the outgoing message starts.

From experience, most cold callers now spoof a different number every time they call.

I have a caller display programmed with numbers from friends etc. which gives my the opportunity of picking up before the answerphone. I can also monitor what is being recorded on the answerphone and therefore can pick up if it is a call I want to answer.

I'm registered with that useless TPS. I have programmed my phone to block all calls of a certain type so quite a few cold caller get silently answered - I can tell because the display on the phone lights up when automatically answering filtered/blocked numbers.

[newshound]

TPS used to be OK but was never designed to cope with calls from outside the UK. Internet calling changed the whole world. I guess you would need more complicated hardware/software to pick up spoofed numbers and/or cross check against a list.

[alan_m]

The calls may come from outside of the UK but often on behalf of companies trading in the UK. Solar, boiler replacement, ambulance chasers, PPI etc.

[mm0fmf]

Have fun with them by learning swear words in their native languages. All of my spam calls (BT internet disconnection, Amazon Prime issues etc.) have come from people with Indian accents using English names. In which case ensuring some Hindi swear words such as "madhar chod" and "suvar chod" are used often during the call really helps to make things more entertaining.

Using such Hindi expressions can completely disconcert them, it's outside their experience to find the mark able to insult them in a local language.

[newshound]

A useful tip, can you suggest some Urdu ones as well?

[Tim Streater]

I was called apparently by the National Crime Agency recently saying my NI number had been used in some criminal activty and I needed to press 1 on my keypad.

[mm0fmf]

Not off the top of my head but I bet Google is your friend. ISTR one of my Indian colleagues at work who was visiting from the Noida office saying that most Indians can understand many languages with Hindi being the most used/understood. So you can try the others but you will probably get close with a few choice Hindi expressions.

The effects can be devastating as they don't expect it.

As Cpl. Jones would say "They don't like it up 'em!'

[Fred]

Google translate says that is sweet leave

And that is drop gold.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I don't think they use years to judge these, this is about the 20th I've heard of, and at least 6 have been headed off here by true call. Its about time the telecom companies started to get serious about who they issue numbers to and who is spoofing them. They obviously are on the network and some official protocol used by bona fide companies and people to spot the rogues should be put in place. They would soon stop if they thought their little game might get them arrested or thrown off the international telephone system. Brian

[mm0fmf]

Not for me.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

newshound laid this down on his screen :

No point, the spoofed number changes everytime. Usually they use an unused number. I just block all unknown numbers - they do eventually give up, so they must have some sort of blacklist and I am now on it - at last. I might if unlucky, see one blocked caller per month.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

on 17/01/2021, Brian Gaff (Sofa) supposed :

+1

There ought to be an official database, which could be quickly updated by those receiving the calls, say 10 such calls added and they are blocked.

[critcher]

had one the other day, indian, telling me they were going to turn of my internet. Well I like to keep em online for as long as possible, so I make a few machine like noises, and she says what is that, I say my computer, that she says it is the people from Nigeria and South America using my internet, so I make another computer like noise, she rumbles me and tells me to f*ck off, you bastard, me? I was rolling on the floor, you have to enjoy the calls. On a more serious note how much do these calls cost them, and how do they spoof the numbers they use?

[alan_m]

Pre covid I used to get cold calls every day. Trucall blocked many but often because the same calling number was being used and I blacklisted it. Trucall also blocked withheld and International numbers.

Although blocked by Trucall my caller display logs all incoming calls, included calls.

During our first Covid lockdown the number of cold calls reduced dramatically sometimes to zero a month.

After our first lockdown the number of cold calls increased again but nowhere near the previous pre covid level.

Now, I'll get one or two weeks without a cold call but then I will get up to 12 in a day some at 6am and others around 10pm. In all cases it appears to be a different spoofed number every time, either with a local or London code.

[mm0fmf]

Which bit of spoofed caller ID do you not understand?

[NY]

If the various telephone companies were sufficiently motivated to investigate, would it be possible to trace where a call is entering the originating telephone system, irrespective its spoofed caller ID? Is there non-spoofable tracking information, available only to telephone companies and not the end user? The equivalent of seeing which servers an email message has passed through on its way from source to destination, as opposed to only looking at the "From" and "Reply To" fields. The police have long been able to trace where a landline call is coming from. In the case of calls originating on VOIP, how far back can the call be traced.

Is the problem more one of "can't be bothered, don't regard it as serious enough to investigate" rather than actual technical restriction?

Have any spammers started spoofing real phone numbers, as opposed to made-up numbers with real STD codes?