Scammers?

[Brian Gaff]

I have had a number of calls this week, indeed two today who replace the phone when confronted by the call screener. I rang it back just now. Its some crowd calling itself Energy saving Hub. Obviously English. They ignore what you tell them and are pushing to get people to let them give yoyos a free loft insulation inspection. They infer they are government funded, but avoid any direct questions. They use the old news that Fibreglass can be an irritant, like who does not know that?. When you tell them it was done under a government scheme they then say if its more than 18 months ago it could still be out of date. In the end I just could not stop her blithering in my ear so put the phone down.

Its probably some fly by night mob trying to get a foot in the door. They got no info from me and in my view if they cannot be bothered to use the call screener their bottom line is profit or scamming. Brian

[John Rumm]

I got a spate of calls some time back from a well spoken voice, claiming to be "my local energy advisor". Claiming "local" was odd since it was from a Dorset dialling code each time.

Conversations were somewhat disjointed. I got the impression it actually a very well done voice menu bot in the end - at least at the start of the call. Since if you spoke while it spoke, it paused, but then carried on, not seeming to have registered what you said etc.

[Adrian]

Sounds like the outfit that had a phase of phoning me up a while back (probably pre-pandemic). They started with a Bournemouth/Poole number, then changed to using a number on the same exchange as me.

They claimed that they were my local energy advisor and had to inspect my government funded loft insulation. I pointed out that I didn't have any government funded loft insulation, but they still insisted that they had to inspect it:

Me - "So you have to inspect some insulation that doesn't exist ?" Them - "Yes"

At which point I hung up.

I was also starting to wonder if it was some form of voice bot rather than something resembling a human being. I haven't heard from them since.

Adrian

[Joe]

Usually worth asking Google if it knows about the number. There are several automated sites that collect scam reports. If it's genuine, of course, it should lead to the business which called you...

[Tim+]

Why did you ring a cold caller back?

Tim

Brian Gaff [e-mail] wrote:

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yeah. In one case it was a genuine scammer. My bank I think trying to sell me something.

[Sam Plusnet]

I had a similar experience. I didn't think to mention the TPS (before I hung up) - it might have been interesting to see if they had a planned response to that.

[Brian Gaff]

I'm normally pretty good at spotting bots, and I think this was just a script the people worked from. I deleted the number so don't know where it was, but the start of it seemed to be infested with 1 a lot. Unfortunately, though they from the same dialling code area, the last four digits differed.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

The response to the tps is that the Gov does not have to comply with it. Very dubious. Brian

[Graham.]

Oh "Chris", he's a bot, no doubt of that John. Quite convincing though on the first hearing. When he called back again I was ready for him and he was connected to my bot "Lenny". Here is the result!

[Tim Streater]

Gives me:

An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: UeoUt3uGiLE2HrQY)

[SteveW]

It worked for me, 5 minutes ago.

[jkn]

I think I have had that one as well, from a Bournemouth number, quite a few calls some six months ago.

I was a decently well-spoken male british voice. I too decided that it was a bot, but it was quite impressively done. I listened a couple of times after I decided this, to try to throw in questions and see how good it was.

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

0118 2303226 Which is a Reading code, I had multiple blocked calls from similar Reading area numbers, so I rang them back..

Female, Reading accent, began saying 'I'm your local energy advisor...' On my saying nothing, she started with the 'hello, hello'

Strange part was, there was no ringing tone, just complete silence until she spoke..

[John Rumm]

Loverly :-)

Not quite as sanctifying wasting a bots time as that of an Indian scammer.

OOI what did you use to automate that?

[Graham.]

It's a Raspberry Pi project RASPBX a port of FREEPBX (Asterisk)

The Lenny function is just thee additional lines of code in

/etc/asterisk/extensions_custom_conf

[Lenny] exten => talk,1,Set(i=${IF($["0${i}"="016"]?7:$[0${i}+1])}) same => n,ExecIf($[${i}=1]?MixMonitor(${UNIQUEID}.wav)) same => n,Playback(Lenny/Lenny${i}) same => n,BackgroundDetect(Lenny/backgroundnoise,1500)

This (somehow) calls up the individual ulaw phrases from

/var/lib/asterisk/sounds/en/Lenny

and has no inelegance as such, apart for waiting for relative silence on the line before delivering the next phrase.

[alan_m]

The scammers often spoof the last number called as the originating number. People are more likely to pick up a call if they see it is local.

[alan_m]

Many years ago I had a snail mail from RBS saying that they had been unsuccessful trying to contact me by phone* and I should contact them urgently about my account.

When I did phone the branch a was told that it wasn't urgent, nothing was wrong with my account and they just wanted me to make an appointment to come in to discuss my financial planning aka to sell me a product that made them the most commission!

A strongly worded complaint was sent to both the branch manager and head office with a copy of the original letter. I did get an apology but it was one of the main reasons for changing banks.

*They may have been phoning me but would have always got the answer machine and then failed to leave a message.

[Andy Burns]

How would a scammer know the last number anyone had called?

[Graham.]

The male "Chris" bot that I recorded presented

020 3740 0727 & 020 3773 9914 as CLI

and according to reports on

was active from 11/5/22 to 18/11/22

Interestingly, out of all the dozens of reports, not one identified "Chris" as being a recording or bot, and I'm ashamed to say that included me when I logged a report on 18/10/2022

It wasn't until I listened to it a couple of times I realised there were two bots talking to each other!