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New Phone Scam. ( to me..)

Action Fraud is misnamed and I don’t know why. It was never intended to take action against fraudsters. It is, as is noted above, mostly about collating fraud stats for governs and law enforcement.
 
hifi-dog said:
Does being ex directory stop these calls?
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Almost everyone is that now (have you seen the 'phone book' lately?) but these companies don't operate within the law, and are often based outside the UK.
Going to Sky and using their blocking system stopped spam calls immediately, and 100%.
Mobile phones are a different matter.
 
I don’t think I’m imagining it, i’ve noticed an increase in these calls whenever I put my number online doing price comparisons or I’ve phoned customer services at companies I use, do scammers somehow scrape your number of logs/registers out there?
 
twotone said:
The thing that bothers me with this particular scam is where the eff did they get my email address?
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@Jamie beat me to the haveibeenpwned link.

There have been so many leaks and hacks over the years. I regularly get spam on an account that was used with my LinkedIn account. LinkedIn was hacked some years ago. Luckily I didn't use that account much so could be pretty sure what was spam.
 
Barrymagrec said:
telephone preference service
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That service did actually used to work very well ( as in I signed up and subsequently never got a marketing call) for quite a long time (about 10 years or so), but after a while I started getting the occassional call. I suspect it's because the service can't influence offshore calls, which is where most of these calls now originate. But anyway, back 15 years ago or so the service worked perfectly, as far as I could tell at least.
 
My wife received a new call on her mobile this week saying that there was a problem with her visa application. "Press 1 to speak to an agent etc."
 
gintonic said:
soon you will get calls from AI bots with voices you may recognise
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Already happening, apparently, and terrifyingly convincing - I heard of an example recently which, if I recall correctly, concerned a daughter phoning her mother in trouble of some kind and needing money.

They don't need much of a voice sample apparently, which provides a stronger case still for not engaging these people at all. I don't, I just hang straight up. I have awful difficulty though in pursuading my mother to do the same. They are incredibly clever, and can hook you before you've even realised. They can also build up a profile of potential vulnerabilities by gaining even small snippets of information.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
Almost everyone is that now (have you seen the 'phone book' lately?) but these companies don't operate within the law, and are often based outside the UK.
Going to Sky and using their blocking system stopped spam calls immediately, and 100%.
Mobile phones are a different matter.
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I’m moving to bt full fibre and was given the option of retaining a tel no or not , we chose yes and opted for no phone book entry.. I have a healthy list of numbers on my bt blacklist that go to junk automatically
 
eternumviti said:
Already happening, apparently, and terrifyingly convincing - I heard of an example recently which, if I recall correctly, concerned a daughter phoning her mother in trouble of some kind and needing money.

They don't need much of a voice sample apparently, which provides a stronger case still for not engaging these people at all. I don't, I just hang straight up. I have awful difficulty though in pursuading my mother to do the same. They are incredibly clever, and can hook you before you've even realised. They can also build up a profile of potential vulnerabilities by gaining even small snippets of information.
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Seems implausible. How would the scammer know who was related to the ‘daughter’ in order to call them? And any one voice would only work for a hundred or so targets, surely?
 
alanbeeb said:
I tend not to answer phone calls nowadays if I don't recognise the number.... but if I do and its situation like that I ask them if they are proud and happy with themselves for the work they do.

I used to get calls from posh UK female voices telling me I had been involved in car accident and I could claim enhanced compensation. Who falls for that?
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I used to play them along with car accident scam - “Yes, Yes, Blah, Blah”. Can you give me your Car Registration please? “P155 0FF”. Then the phone usually goes down at their end 😂
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Seems implausible. How would the scammer know who was related to the ‘daughter’ in order to call them? And any one voice would only work for a hundred or so targets, surely?
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It's always a numbers game for the scammers. Put enough emails/Whatsapps/calls out there, eventually they get a hit.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Seems implausible. How would the scammer know who was related to the ‘daughter’ in order to call them? And any one voice would only work for a hundred or so targets, surely?
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It's happening in India. Son has trouble with the police and needs money for a bribe. The "police" pass the phone to the AI generated "son" Very targeted.
 
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