Telephone Scams – How to avoid them.

editor's note:- This came from Julian at Tech Media as a ChatBox submission – but is worth a wider audience!

Telephone Scams – How to avoid them.

There seems to be a spike in fraudulent telephone scams at the moment, thankfully it's fairly easy to avoid becoming a victim when armed with some basic information.

Fraudsters will often phone you claiming to be from Microsoft, BT or even your bank, claiming they are calling you to help with some problem they have discovered.

Firstly, it's very unlikely any of these companies would ever call you so this should alert you that the call is likely to be a scam.

You will likely find the person on the other end of the call is polite, professional and well spoken.

They will often attempt to validate their identity by "spoofing" their phone number, for example in a common bank card scam the call will appear to have come from the fraud team number printed on the back of you bank card.

Spoofing simply means that that the number displayed on your phone is not really the number they are calling from.

In my opinion the quickest way to protect yourself is to politely end the call thanking them for their help.

Maybe say you are busy at the moment and will call the company fraud number later.

Past experience shows that simply hanging up will likely result in them calling again.

Sadly these people are very good at what they do, rest assured everything they are saying is almost certainly untrue, there likely isn't anything wrong with your computer and no one (other than them) is trying to access your bank account.

Goes without saying really but never give anyone pin numbers, passwords and most importantly never allow anyone to remotely access your computer.

Security is generally good, no one can access your computer or bank account unless you let them.

If your bank ever did detect fraudulent activity the FIRST thing they do is freeze the account then wait for you to call them.

They do not call you.

If you happen to receive such a call and you really do think they're telling the truth the advice is still the same, end the call.

All companies and banks have dedicated fraud investigators, their legitimate numbers are readily available on their genuine websites, in the case of your bank the legitimate number is printed on the back of every bank card.

If you really think something is actually wrong, call the genuine legitimate fraud team and report the incident.

Julian

TechMedia