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A scam phone calls and emails discussion.

Domh245

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Don't forget that the generation that you are patronising is the one that invented the technology that we are using and discussing.

I hate these sort of comments. A handful of that generation will have invented & developed that technology, but the vast majority of them will have had no involvement with it until they've started to use them...
 
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najaB

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I hate these sort of comments. A handful of that generation will have invented & developed that technology, but the vast majority of them will have had no involvement with it until they've started to use them...
True. But then the post being replied to was equally bad in that it said that most seniors would be incapable of looking at the caller ID of an inbound call and figuring out who it was.

One good generalisation deserves another...
 

najaB

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I wonder how many home telephones these days there are that do not have this facility, thinking of landline phones in particular. I am one of those.
I'd guess that most phones sold these days, other than the cheapest of the cheapest, will have built-in caller display at the very least. The more pricey ones will allow you to add/edit numbers to an address book and may annunciate the caller while ringing. For those who don't have a display, BT used to provide them free/at cost, though I'm not 100% sure if they still do.

Edit: Having had a quick search through the plastics, I think the BT caller display units have been discontinued.
 
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Jamesrob637

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I think I'm going to set my phone to divert unknown numbers straight to voicemail with the exception of withheld numbers which could be my doctors or dentist.
 

John Webb

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Clearly the scammers weren't taking the Bank Holiday off - 5 unwanted calls received in the 24 hours from 9am yesterday to today! But all intercepted by the 'Call Guardian' system built into my phone, so not one of them disturbed me!
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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I have just watched the BBC1 programme "For love or money" that finished at 2100 this evening. Very revealing indeed and Ghana was the country involved in the scam that was being investigated that left a man many thousands of pounds out of pocket. Did anyone on this website see it?
 

Mcr Warrior

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I have just watched the BBC1 programme "For love or money" that finished at 2100 this evening. Very revealing indeed and Ghana was the country involved in the scam that was being investigated that left a man many thousands of pounds out of pocket. Did anyone on this website see it?
Think what was aired tonight on BBC1 was a shortened 30 mins revised repeat. Programme was first broadcast in February / March 2021, I believe.

More here... (Link to BBC website).

 

JohnMcL7

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My Mum was complaining that Hermes were wanting to charge her £1.50 for a redelivery which immediately set alarm bells ringing for me because I knew they didn't do that. I checked the site she was using and it looked just like the Hermes site and the links all pointed to the actual Hermes site, the time and date of the delivery was when she'd been out and she was expecting a delivery via Hermes. She'd received the link in a text message and while she shouldn't have clicked the link which you could see wasn't the proper Hermes URL it did look convincing and when checking the site I noticed it date/time stamped the failed delivery to three hours before the current time. I'd also received the same scam message plus a couple of bank ones she had as well, it's alarm how convincing these scams are.
 

najaB

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I'd also received the same scam message plus a couple of bank ones she had as well, it's alarm how convincing these scams are
That's why the "don't click on links" message needs to be repeated over and over.
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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Computerised female voice said 'This is the Mastercard department of your bank (unspecified). There has been a suspicious foreign withdrawal of £600 from your account. To stop this and subsequent transactions please press 1'.
This one must be doing the rounds again, as I had such a call early this afternoon....word for word. As usual, I did not speak and after 10 seconds, the line went dead. Added the number to my 1572 collection.

However, ten minutes later, the phone rang again, but as soon as I answered, the line went dead. Rang 1471 and was informed "The caller witheld their number".
 
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Gloster

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Think what was aired tonight on BBC1 was a shortened 30 mins revised repeat. Programme was first broadcast in February / March 2021, I believe.

More here... (Link to BBC website).

The BBC website now has a story about a woman who was scammed out of £113,000 by one of these romance frauds. They will continue until there are no more gullible fools around, i.e. for ever (unless even more lucrative opportunities appear).
 

Jamesrob637

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01615299857 has called me once a fortnight ago, once last week and now once this week. After the first call, I set this number to automatically reach my answering machine.

Don't you think they'd give up after certainly the second time?! I can understand somebody calling twice. Obviously these numbers never leave a message.
 

Mcr Warrior

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01615299857 has called me once a fortnight ago, once last week and now once this week.
Number seems to be associated with a call centre supposedly promoting government funding for new boilers.

Draw your own conclusion(s) as to whether this is a scam or not.
 

John Webb

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01615299857 has called me once a fortnight ago, once last week and now once this week. After the first call, I set this number to automatically reach my answering machine.

Don't you think they'd give up after certainly the second time?! I can understand somebody calling twice. Obviously these numbers never leave a message.

Number seems to be associated with a call centre supposedly promoting government funding for new boilers.

Draw your own conclusion(s) as to whether this is a scam or not.
This is a scam caller - I've had calls from a couple of very similar numbers who've been rebuffed by my Call Guardian system and on looking up the numbers on the "Who called me?" website have been revealed as scammers!
 

GusB

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Don't you think they'd give up after certainly the second time?! I can understand somebody calling twice. Obviously these numbers never leave a message.
Nope, they won't. As long as they think they've got a chance to scam you, they'll keep going until they get a bite.

I had two callers this week claiming to be from BT Openreach. They've obviously cottoned on to the fact that you'll be suspicious if they say they're from BT (retail) and you happen to be with a different provider which is managing your account, but uses BT for the infrastructure. Unless you're in a cable area, the chances are that it's BT Openreach that manage the line to your home and I'd imagine that it's fairly easy to con people, especially as you see Openreach vans on a fairly regular basis.

The first call woke me up, but I was too groggy to deal with it and I just hung up. The second time was about an hour later and I was ready for it. I told the guy to go forth and multiply with himself and was instantly hit with a barrage of abuse; there's no way anyone who is genuinely from Openreach would behave like that!

I do wish these idiots would phone me in the afternoon when I'm more likely to be fully functional, but I suppose that's part of their scheme - catching people off-guard.
 

MarlowDonkey

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I had two callers this week claiming to be from BT Openreach. They've obviously cottoned on to the fact that you'll be suspicious if they say they're from BT (retail) and you happen to be with a different provider which is managing your account, but uses BT for the infrastructure. Unless you're in a cable area, the chances are that it's BT Openreach that manage the line to your home and I'd imagine that it's fairly easy to con people, especially as you see Openreach vans on a fairly regular basis.
In my experience, Openreach are impossible to contact. They insist on communicating through the retail service provider, even if it's BT.
 

najaB

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In my experience, Openreach are impossible to contact. They insist on communicating through the retail service provider, even if it's BT.
Which is correct. You (as a consumer or business) aren't their customer, your communications provider (CP) is.

By way of an analogy, if you lease a car from a dealer and then it has a fault you go to the dealer for service, rather than going to the car manufacturer.

Openreach have no information on their systems about the retail customer anyway.
 

Mcr Warrior

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Funny, I don't have an account with NatWest...
Enough others will, however, as spam texts are essentially a numbers game, and it just takes 1 in 100,000 to positively respond to make it worthwhile. :rolleyes:
 

A Challenge

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Enough others will, however, as spam texts are essentially a numbers game, and it just takes 1 in 100,000 to positively respond to make it worthwhile. :rolleyes:
And as I've had happen, if they send you enough texts of this nature, at some point they'll get it right and if someone's likely to fall for it as they might forget all the others in a panic.
 

najaB

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Enough others will, however, as spam texts are essentially a numbers game, and it just takes 1 in 100,000 to positively respond to make it worthwhile. :rolleyes:
Our company gets texts for 1.5p each. So it isn't even an expensive numbers game, if you use the right provider.
 

westv

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I found it hilarious the couple of times I have had calls from people claiming to be from BT.
BT has never provided any phone services here. :D
 

PauloDavesi

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Had two very threatening calls from 0114 6970158 claiminig to be HRMC and claiming I am facing criminal charges.
The tone is very threatening, so please beware.

When called the number has a non UK ring tone and connects to an Indian call centre with oberatives with very poor english language skills.
 

Mcr Warrior

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Had two very threatening calls from 0114 6970158 claiminig to be HMRC and claiming I am facing criminal charges.
The tone is very threatening, so please beware.
Been a rash of calls from this ostensibly Sheffield based number.

Wonder just how many of the call centre operatives in Bangalore (or wherever this particular one is actually based) actually know that they are participating in a scam, or naively think they are legitimately employed?
 

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