No but I do know Hotmail are getting very finickety about the origin (ip address) of email. It appears one of my domain's mail server shares the particular hosting co's IP address with a few hundred other mail servers. Mail from my mail server is routinely bounced by Hotmail (but no one else). Maybe that's why you aren't getting any? Problem is what else are M$ bouncing too?...
How does knowing how many devices were connected to the machine help a scammer to defraud the poor old lady?
Like.....?
Those are not "connected devices" though are they?
"ring ring"
(answer) "Hello"
"Hi, my name's Alex and I'm calling from BT"
me (sceptical) "Yeeees"
"We are doing some work on your internet and have moved you from channel 853 to channel 629"
(thinks what the *** are you on about)
"Yeeeees"
"this means that we have to check your internet connection", "how many lights on your router are flashing"
walks into other room
"One, oh two, oh one, oh two"
"OK, that's good", "How many devices are connected to your router"
"Sorry I have no idea, how do I find that out" (I do really know how to find out, I'm just testing him [1])
"Hello hello, are you still there"
"Yes"
"How many devices are connected to your router"
"Sorry I have no idea, how do I find that out"
"Hello hello, are you still there"
Yes"
"Hello hello, are you still there"
"yes"
"How many devices are connected to your router"
"Sorry I have no idea, I have a wireless router, I have no idea whether my TV is currently connected to my router, it has a mind of its own about this, so how do I find out how many devices are connected?"
silence (but still connected)
after 4 and half minutes I disconnect the call
what's the point of a Scamming script that asks questions that the majority of people wont be able to answer.
Nuts!
tim
[1] You enter the router address into a browser. I assume that the router address required depends upon your router type, so to go any further he has to ask about the type of router that you have. At that point he will find out that I'm not a BT customer :-)<snip>
Is this a good place to interrupt and ask the team about my complete lack of spam - everywhere? Its complete and utter absence is making me nervous - is some other scam taking place, somehow?
Very few genuine people call me on the landline phone - we tend to use Skype - but I have had literally no "marketing" calls at all for well over two months. I even phone my landline from my mobile from time to time to check that it is working and, yes, it is. I keep the landline because my ADSL broadband arrives that way.
Similarly, I've had no unexpected or unwanted emails arrive either to my ISP's email account or my hotmail one. My junkmail folders remain empty. Have Microsoft and the ISPs upped their game recently and managed to block spam more effectively? AFAICT all expected email is arriving - personal and business - it's just the unwanted stuff that's gone.
I ought to be delighted - the unwanted stuff was a pain - but the complete and utter disappearance of everything unwanted seems creepy somehow.
Anybody else in the same position?
Nick
I had one ask about the number of lights on the router once... I told him "about 14" and he said "are you sure", I said "yup, just counted them", and he hung up on me :-)
(Script obviously not able to deal with anything more sophisticated than the typical ISP "free" router).
I would guess the vast majority of domestic routers will respond on
192.168.n.m, where n is either 0 or 1, and m is 1 or 254.Checking the default gateway registered by the OS is usually a quick way to find it. So in Windows type IPCONFIG at a command prompt and look at the default gateway for the interface you are connected by.
The scammers have blacklisted you :)
You may not appear on any records as existing which will be a problem when you need the NHS or State Benefits. On the other hand you might well get away with not paying taxes.
hth
AFAIK all the stuff I expect to arrive is arriving - friends, banks, businesses etc. Nothing in discussions with anybody to suggest I haven't received or am not receiving genuine email. But the bad guys all seem to have melted away.
I'd be even more suspicious if I stopped getting emails from banks, etc because I'd take it that fraudsters had intervened with my account. But no, all of that is arriving normally and there's no sign that anybody has tried to siphon three billion quid out of my current account.
Nick
<grin>
N.
HMRC have given up on me. I've been retired for a couple of years now, living on the state pension and they've finally decided that they don't want me to fill in a self-assessment form any longer. So they are not writing to me either - do you suppose that they were the ones behind the scam emails all along?
Nick
Companies are paying more attention to authentication methods for email these days.
So for example if you send from an email address that is part of a domain you own, even if you don't want to go for the full DKIM bit, its still well worth adding a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record to your domain to indicate the servers that you actually use for sending email. That tends to improve deliverability and make your sent messages less likely to be categorised as spam, since the receiving server can then check where the message actually came from against where it should have come from.
They seem to be behind many of the scam calls - at least according to the Indian sounding chappie called "Steve" that apparently works for them ;-))
My wife got one from "BT" the other day. The caller asked how many red lights on the router. None, she said, they're blue.
<click>As it happens I think she looked at the modem, not the router!
Andy
You would hope someone from BT would know that their Home Hub routers often have Blue LEDs to indicate "normal".
:-)
They're actually RGB LEDs, when using openWRT on the HH5a, you can configure the colours to indicate e.g. VDSL and WiFi status.
I am like that on te landline. about a call a week and 50/50 that its a scam.
Mostly its email for me
Having said that a person around here was scammed by this and had over 3000 quid taken from their bank as in the end the lady let the person on the phone get into her machine and find out how many devices were connected. Perhaps your scammer had a page of his script missing. Luckily the bank spotted the odd behaviour and put the transfer on hold and contacted her. She now has no access to her money until all the cards are replaced and the passwords changed and the machines she uses completely cleaned. Brian
Yup, they go through different colours during initialisation with the BT firmware as well - usually ending on blue as "up and running".
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