The Anatomy of a Scam

Example 2

Date: 30th July 2020, time: 3.05pm.

Phone rings: Tring, tring, tring, tring.
Hello, Hello.

[Silence]

‘Your Amazon Prime account will be auto renewed at £79.99.  If you don’t want this happen, press 1 to speak to the service manager.’

What would you do, if this happens to you?

What goes through my mind: ‘I don’t want to pay £79.99 for something I didn’t ask for in the first place. How dare they? I must speak to this manager and tell him to cancel it right away.’

Again, I resist the urge, I hang up and dial 1471.

However, I resist my urge, hang up and dial 1471 and discover this time I had been called from 01611295717 and I note down the details.

Example 3

This happens again the following day the 31st of July at 10:24 AM. From Amazon allegedly, threatening to renew my Amazon prime contract costing me £79.99 unless I press 1 and speak to their service manager.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Amazon, or Amazon Prime. Amozon is a booming global company and Amazon Prime is a very popular service. I am an Amazon customer myself, but made a choice not to go for Amazon prime. So I don’t want somebody else ‘to renew’ a service I didn’t join in the first place.

I hung up and dialled 1471instead, and found the call this time had come from 01236 787695 – another new number and note down the details.

All these three are recent examples of real life scams.

So, what is a scam?

A scam is a deceptive scheme or trick used to cheat someone out of something, especially money.

In our modern connected world, there are lot of different scams, many involving the telephone or internet.

Unfortunately, these are the hazards of living in the 21^st century. Learning to live with them and deal with them effectively, without falling victims to them is an essential skill to have in this connected age.

In this post I am going to cover just two common scams which are widespread, which could happen to anyone. Therefore, it is well worth taking a few minutes to get to know what they are and how to protect yourself against them.

The first one I have illustrated above, is a common scam involving your telephone. The second one below, is a ‘Technical Support’ scam helping to fix your computer.

The person or persons behind the telephone scams I listed, have nothing to do with your Internet service provider or Amazon. Therefore, they can’t switch off your Internet connection or renew your Amazon prime account.

They are confidence tricksters, opportunistic conmen, long-distance pickpockets – after your hard-earned money.

Back in 1964, Arthur C Clarke predicted that a day would come “When a man could conduct his business from Haiti or Bali just as well as from London.” That day is here now and along with many legitimate businesses, scammers and criminals have jumped on the bandwagon to rob people thousands of miles away using technology.

So how does the telephone scam work?

Had I trusted the caller and pressed the number they asked me to, what would have happened?
I would have been connected to an expensive phone line that would cost anything from £1 to£5 a minute and taken into a long drawn out message – usually pre-recorded to keep me on the line – ‘to solve my problem.’ The call is reversed-charged so the call this time is billed to me.

If I hadn’t known any better, I would have ended the call feeling relieved and grateful to these kind folk for helping me save my internet connection or stop from being charged £79. 99 by Amazon.  

It’s only at the end of the month that I would discover that I had been conned – stung with a very expensive phone call, for something made up, to fix a problem that did not exist in the first place.

How am I sure it was a scam?

• Several days have passed since, not just 24 hours as they warned, I have not been cut off and my Internet connection is very much alive!
• I logged into my Amazon Account and discovered that I have not been charged £79.99 for Amazon Prime.  

How can you tell a telephone scam, what are the signs to look out for?

• When you pick up the phone usually there is a silence lasting a few seconds.  This is because it is a computer who has dialled you and waiting for a human voice. Once it hears your voice it needs a few sdeconds to play its pre-recorded message,
• Usually the message is designed to instil fear – about something bad that is going to happen, unless you to take prompt preventive action, such as pressing a button they ask you to.
• They don’t ask for money to arouse suspicion. They make their money indirectly through an unnecessary and expensive phone call billed to you.  
• Usually they are recurrent, Once started, expect these calls to come again as these calls are automated and your number has got into their list.  The conmen behind these scams get computer programs – so called BOTs to do the dirty work for them, while they enjoy their ill-gotten wealth on lavish lifestyles such as fast cars, exotic holidays and yatchts.

Technical support scams

Technical support scam is where you get a call from someone claiming to be a service engineer from a reputed company such as Microsoft, Norton or BT claiming that it has come to their notice that your computer has a virus or a serious problem that they offer to fix.

Last year an elderly lady known to me was getting these calls several times a week.   They said they were from Microsoft, it had come to their notice that her computer had been infected with a virus. They kept asking her to press a certain key on her computer to let them in to fix the problem. I told her that Microsoft engineers have more important things to attend to, and they don’t call people at home uninvited, and asked her to ignore the calls and report them to the authorities.

Again, had she listened to them and done what they had asked her to do, they would have gained access to her computer – either infected it with a virus she didn’t have, or blocked her out, and then demanded a ransom to let her back in. Fortunately for her, she took my advice and ignored the calls and they gave up.

A gang of technical support scammer go their come uppance when they got caught on camera red-handed for the whole world to see. It was shown on BBC1 on 2 March 2020, on a Panorama programme called: Spying on the Scammers. This particular gang was based in north India, but it could come from anywhere.

So, how do you protect yourself against these scams?

There are several things you could do to protect yourself. As both these scams use your phone line to reach you, one of the best deterrants is to prevent this kind of calls getting through in the first place. Also there are other steps you could take to safeguard yourself even if you end up getting a call:

Use the facilities provided by your telecom provider to control who gets through to you

Most telecom providers offer a range of services to protect their customers which are particularly popular with people living on their own, and especially the elderly.

• Caller display: shows the number presented by the person calling, thereby helping you decide whether you want to answer the call in the first place.
• Call filtering: helps you set up a list of numbers you would want to receive calls from, whilst barring everything else.  If you opt for this, make sure you update your list from time to time to ensure someone essential services such as your doctor’s surgery is included in your list.
• Anonymous call rejection:  Often scammers or some callers making unsolicited or nuisance marketing calls may try to hide their identity by withholding their number.  Anonymous call rejection allows you to block calls from a people who withhold their number
• Voicemail or 1571: when set up allows you to screen the calls without answering and choose whether to return the call once you’ve listened to the message.
• Last caller identification: Dialling 1471 immediately after the call, can help identify the number of the last caller (unless the caller has withheld their number). And decide what course of action to take.

Other actions you can take for yourself

• Always have a notepad and a pencil handy, close to your telephone
• Keep a cool head when answering the phone and listen to and look for the tell-tale signs
• Do not do what they ask you to do, i.e. press the buttons. Just hang up
• Dial 1471 to get the caller details and note down the date, time, and the caller number.
• If you want to reassure yourself, contact your service provider (internet service provider, Amazon etc.) directly, using their contact details you have on your bills.
• Report the scam to Action Fraud the national cyber scam unit using their website (also given below) if you live in the UK. If you live elsewhere, find the equivalent agency in your own country.

This is how:  Having experienced this before and having helped other people, I decided not play ball with them from the outset. I did not press the number they asked me to press. Instead I hung up, dialled 1471 to find out the numbers that called and made note of them.

Useful links:

Action Fraud:  www.actionfraud.police.uk

BBC 1 Panorama, 2 March 2020 – Spying on the Scammers: http://tiny.cc/BBC-panorama   

The Northern Ireland man who hacked into Indian call centre to obtain CCTV footage of scammers targeting him:  http://tiny.cc/JimBrowning

Virgin Media O2 have created a cyber security safety test that aims to build awareness and educate users of all ages on how to better protect themselves from online threats. With four sets of ten questions each, under the headings: Cybercrime, Identity Theft, Malware and Phishing, it is a great place to start building your awareness of being safe online.
Take the cyber security safety test