new scam

[Lankyman]

I usually reckon to be able to spot a scam a mile off and have a call blocker on my landline to prevent nuisance calls. They have now resorted to calling me on my mobile but fortunately I can blacklist them on there as well. However, a couple of months ago I was well and truly scammed, On a Saturday afternoon I needed a particular product fairly quickly so went onto the Argos website where I found exaxctly what I wanted. Whats more it was available at my local store so I ordered it and paid by credit card, I nipped down to the store where there was no queue and collected the item in less than five minutes, brilliant service! The following day I got a message from Argos asking me to review my experience at the store and I was so pleased with my experience I was happy to oblige and completed the review. I was convinced that there was mention that my name would be entered in a monthly draw with a prize of £500.

A couple of weeks later I got an e-mail to say that I was the winner of the £500 and just had to confirm my identity by following a link. I was suspicious and left it for a few days but then convinced myself that it was genuine so I followed the link which took me to what I thought was the genuine Argos website. I got a little more concerned  when I was asked to put in details of my Argos card account but I don't have such a thing. At this point I was stuck but thinking they wanted me to confirm how I had paid for my item, foolishly I put in my credit dard details and the matter proceeded. At that point I realised I had just committed a very stupid act so immediately rang Argos. Whilst waiting for someone to answer I heard a recorded message saying that if I had received a message saying I had won a monthly prize draw then this was a scam as there was no such prize draw. I was eventually put through to the Argos fraud department who confirmed it was a scam and advised me to contact my credit card company which I did immediately. They checked and confirmed there was no suspicious activity on my credit card so they gave me a choice, either cancel the card and wait two weeks for a new one or wait and see. As it was approaching Christmas and I needed the card I chose the latter. I always check my card acivities every day and ca ouple of days later a couple of strange items appeared in the pending transactions, a total of £15. I immediately rang the credit card company and confirmed these were fraudulent test purchases. The card was immediately cancelled and I had to wait for a new card. The £15 was was refunded by the bank so no loss to me, only feeling very stupid.

This story only goes to show that it doesn't matter how careful you are you can still get caught out. What fooled me was the quality of the Argos website that I was taken to when I followed the link. It was exactly like the one I had made my original purchase on, so much so that I am convinced it was an inside job. Clearly a lot of other people had been stung if Argos were already aware of it when I rang them. Although I got away with it this time the outcome of this experience is that I will never again complete a review of any product I buy on line. You just can't trust them anyway.

Ron

[DarrwestLU6]

Excuse my Directness but that's really scary (changed by forum)!

[chrism]

What fooled me was the quality of the Argos website that I was taken to when I followed the link. It was exactly like the one I had made my original purchase on, so much so that I am convinced it was an inside job.

The perpetrators of such scams are both clever and sneaky. One thing that they sometimes do is use characters from the alternative character sets that look similar to real characters but will be interpreted by a computer as something completely different - so a link URL might look at first glance to be completely genuine, even if you look at the actual URL and not just what the text says so think it's perfectly legit.

For example in plain text,  thís or thìs instead of this.

[njee20]

Ultimately you can make a website look superficially the same as a genuine one easily enough, going as far as to have links to the real one should you click on any, but I agree it's scary.

I got scammed a few years ago by someone who appeared to have intercepted a debit card my bank had sent to an old address - they caught me out because they had more information than I would have expected (not realising they had my debit card), so access to my online banking was comparatively easy. They text me to say "fraudulent transaction yada yada yada" from the same number as all the genuine messages from my bank, and I ended up authorising a transaction. Got the money back immediately, and the police got involved (they transferred money to a bank account in my name, which wasn't mine!), but it was all extremely sophisticated.

[Newportnobby]

In the days of the E111 European Insurance card (now EHIC) I remember renewing mine on their website only to be informed there was a £14.95 charge. Ouch, thought I. Typical money grabbing by the government. It was only a couple of months down the line I found I'd been directed to a totally bogus but very realistic web site and that the card was always free

[Papyrus]

On a slight tangent to this, my wife received a suspicious phone call a year or so ago, purporting to be from her bank's security department. The caller had an Indian accent (no prejudice intended - simply that a lot of spoof calls seem to originate in the far east) and said that there was unusual activity on her bank account. She said thank you very much and put the phone down.

We considered checking her account online, but to be on the safe side we got in the car and drove straight to the local branch. It turned out the call was perfectly genuine, it was from their security department and there was suspicious activity on her debit card. They refunded all the fraudulent payments, cancelled the card immediately and issued her with a new one. The slight inconvenience involved was minor compared to what we could have lost.

I suppose the moral of the story is - if you're not sure, go straight to the bank, or whatever, in question, even if you end up feeling a right wally.

Cheers,

Chris

[njee20]

Yes, always worth checking the official website for the number and phoning back, rather than just dealing with an incoming phone call or a phone number from a text.

[Snowwolflair]

Beware of picking up the phone to call your bank even if you source the number separately. 

Scammers can lock your line so you think you are dialling a new line whilst in practice you are still attached to the scammers line.

If the potential scam call came in on landline use a mobile to check and vice versa.

[Safety Engineer]

We were always advised to phone a friend or relative in order to release the line, then phone the Bank.
Apparently the scammers can keep the line open by not hanging up.

Martin

[chrism]

We were always advised to phone a friend or relative in order to release the line, then phone the Bank.
Apparently the scammers can keep the line open by not hanging up.

They used to be able to take advantage of the fact that a call wouldn't be ended until the caller hung up. This was originally to enable the called person to unplug their phone and plug it into a different socket if that were more convenient for them whilst taking the call.

Since the scammers were exploiting this, sometimes even playing a dial tone sound to convince their mark that the line really was clear, BT reduced the time duration before a call is cleared automatically to 2 seconds after either party has hung up. This was almost five years ago now and, IIRC, all other service providers have done likewise.

[njee20]

And there's no way of keeping a line open on a mobile. I forget people still use landlines!

[jpendle]

A long long time ago when I worked at STC, a 'feature' of the Electro-Mechanical exchanges was that the line could only be cleared by the caller hanging up. Hence, you get a call from Mum, she doesn't hang up properly and then half a hour later you pick up the phone to make a call and all you can hear is Mum in the background watching the telly.

At the time it was assumed that digital exchanges would fix that problem, it seems bizarre that this 'feature' would be deliberately added back, but there you go.

Regards,

John P

[middlefour]

We have had 2 of the Amazon Prime spoof calls now, one number was Sheffield the other Market Deeping?? Are they able 'acquire' a phone line for these purposes??

[chrism]

We have had 2 of the Amazon Prime spoof calls now, one number was Sheffield the other Market Deeping?? Are they able 'acquire' a phone line for these purposes??

Depends what you mean by "acquire".

If you mean obtaining your phone number, they usually use autodiallers which go through an entire number range sequentially and stop when they get one that actually rings.

If you mean the number from which they are calling, they can have their system cheat the caller display and present any number they like - which will never be the line, STD code or, even, country from which they are really calling.

[swisstrains]

It's the ones that start by asking "Are you being troubled by nuisance calls?" that amuse me.