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New Phone-Scam Or Urban Legend?

liveinabin

liveinabin

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Oct 19, 2001
Messages
1,921
I was told this at work today by a friend who said it is true because her husband is a copper and told her.

Phone rings and voice says that you have won a holiday and then asks you to hold. What you don't know is that you are being charged £100 a minute for the call. There is nothing the telecoms companies can do. This is being run from the far east somewhere.
 
Um, but if they ring you, they pay for the call, unless you've consented with the operator to accept reverse charges.

This one sounds a bit hokey?
 
Sorry, but if you hold for a call like that, then you deserve to be conned.

I hold no truck with people who try and make money with such cheap tactics, and even less with those who fall for it.

Ever scratched the silver off those cards you get in magasines ?
Funny how you've always won, isn't it.
Or banners on the internet that tell you,'Congratulations you are the 10,000th visitor' or 'Warning your Intenet Connection is not optimised'.

People must actually fall for that stuff

Sign 'o' the Times.
Sad.
 
ring bleeding ring

On average, I'm getting three cold calls of this nature a day. Because I was well brought-up, I politely tell them where to go and hang up. Yesterday was a bit of a first, as I was called by a computer with a recorded message. It gave me a little shiver when I hung up and dialled 1471, because, as always, it was number withheld. I am led to believe that this is a favoured tactic of burglars, who call to see if the house is occupied. Luckily I was in, or I may have returned home to discover that I'd been burgled by robots...
 
Having replaced my telephonic system with the time-honoured two-yoghurt pots-on-a string, I have stopped cold-selling and nuisance calls.
Now where do I tie the string to on my PC and stop SPAM?
 
Why, you tie them to popfile and (if you use outlook for your mail) it's complementary client outclass.

Both free and very effective, in my experience. Unfortunately they can only filter spam after you have downloaded it, so the scum still eat your bandwidth.
 
ok sorry to say this but snopes is both right and wrong i work for bt and there is a scam going round that you get called and hear a recording telling you to press star/9 this reconnects you to a premium line that gets you a £25 connection charge and a billing rate of £25-£50 per min in the end you get a total added to your bill of £500 and theres nothing we can do because the calls are comming from outside the uk

snopes were right though there was a scam in the us where they were getting outside lines when the customers pressed 9 this though in the main no longer works and only rarely worked in the uk

btw i got a call from one of these and can confirm they are real and no i didnt press star and 9 lol

cas
 
casio said:
ok sorry to say this but snopes is both right and wrong i work for bt and there is a scam going round that you get called and hear a recording telling you to press star/9 this reconnects you to a premium line that gets you a £25 connection charge and a billing rate of £25-£50 per min in the end you get a total added to your bill of £500 and theres nothing we can do because the calls are comming from outside the uk

snopes were right though there was a scam in the us where they were getting outside lines when the customers pressed 9 this though in the main no longer works and only rarely worked in the uk

btw i got a call from one of these and can confirm they are real and no i didnt press star and 9 lol

cas
Click to expand...

http://www.icstis.org.uk/icstis2002/default.asp?node=-1
QUOTE: A £20.00 per minute premium rate tariff does not exist – the highest premium rate tariff available is £1.50 per minute. Despite the hundreds of enquiries received by ICSTIS about this ‘scam’ (and most have heard about it second or third-hand), not one person who claims that it has actually happened to them has been able to produce a phone bill to support their story.UNQUOTE
 
ICSTIS only quote £1.50pm for calls comming from the uk these calls that are comming from abroad they dont quote on as far as im aware and whilst i cannot give you the names of the customers who have been billed (due to the DPA) i can assure you that this is not a fake and i have personally seen the bills as proof,

This matter is currently in the hands of solicitors and will be sorted as soon as possible

cas
for more info call 150 opt 4 opt 4 then opt 2 and ask there has been a psb about it where they have been told to keep it quiet unless a customer needs recovering (if they are thinking of leaving to go to another company)
 
At the moment there's a UL going around the uni's up in Glasgow that there's a number that randomly calls mobiles then hangs up, if the person phones back, they are apparantly charged £50 per min. I personally find this hard to believe but even if it was true, these con artists are not going to have much luck targeting students, we're permanently skint with no money in our phones! lol ;)
 
I have been getting quite a few:

1. Recorded messages asking me to push the button - these largely faded away to be replaced by:

2. Silent cold calls (which I believe are a cost saving measure so they don't need a live person on the line if they call someone who is out but connect you o someone if you answer - allegedly).

My brother's girlfriend is a manager at legit call centres (Yellow Pages, etc.) and gave us the opt out number and still the phone calls come in - about 4 or 5 silent calls a day.

I haven't worked out why not speaking to potential cusotmers and/or annoying them is a good idea but they clearly think it is.

Emps
 
I never get cold callers on any of my various house and mobile phones.
It's not fair................:mad:
 
I thought the silent calling things were computers, they had a huge list of numbers to call and if you answered, they'd make a note that you were a "live" number and then at some later point an actual operator would be told to call your number as it was marked "live". I vaguely recall that being talked about on these message boards a few years ago ;)

Luckily since my dad had me add our number to the TPS thing, the number of cold callers has gone down to virtually 0, although I've heard it hasn't worked too well for some (from what I recall the law is simply that you must be able to opt out, so it's up to a company whether to either maintain it's own list of opt-outed numbers, or use a central one like the TPS list).
 
In a space of a month we had three phone calls stating that we had won one of hundreds of really wonderful prizes. We had to ring a primium line to find out what we had won. It's funny how they fail to mention how much the phone call would cost you.

Now the logic of this is that if I had won something, wouldn't they know what my prize was? The first was a message on my answer phone, the second a recorded message and the third was an actual person. They didn't ring back after being told what to do with their prizes.
 
This is all very suspicious, I remember a time when we received a phone bill which had £100 spent over one evening on calls to the Faroe Islands, on a night when no-one was in the house.

I believe that was a 'phreaking' incident (along the lines of hacking, but involving phones).

Oh, and the mobile phone thing (reverse charges at £50 a min) is not too much different to the damn charge we pay anyway :p
 
Phones, phones, phones...

I happen to work in a mobile phone call centre at the mo and there are indeed a great number f scams out there.

There's one where:

You receive a text and the content goes along the lines of:
From: Service Provider...

Congratulations, you have won a guarrenteed prize in our £1000 give away competition, to claim call customer service on 0845 *******.

You call the number (its not a premium rate!) and then you get through to a real person, they advise you that you have won a shopping voucher for one of the supermarkets and that the highest voucher value is £1000, they give you the number and a code and advise you to call 0945 ******* (a premium rate number) The customer calls and the call continually rings (you hear the dialling) but you are actually connected to a recording of the dialling code (so its charging a premium rate) when you do finally get through to the real person they take you address details and say the voucher is in the post... it usually turns out to be a quid, but the call has cost you £20.00.

There's the one where:

You receive a text message and it says:

From: Voicemail...

You have a new voicemail message to hear call o9*********.

The call is a premium rate call and after the extensive menu message you select to listen to your message and it is either silent or an advert. Average call cost £6.00 -£10.00.


There's the one where:

You receive a text message and it reads:

From: Specials dating...

Somebody has seen your profile and wants to meet you for a date! To find out who it is call: 098**********.

You call and after hearing the recorded ringing sound for ages, you get told by a machine that you could be receiving genuine text message like this if you sign to this dating agency. approx charge for call £20.00.

Then ther's the one where you receive a text message that says:

From: service provider...

You are a winner! to claim you prize simply text your:

Name:
Address (including postcode):
Your date of birth:
Your mother's maiden name

to: 87***

(I took a call from a lady who had done this and contacted us because she hadn't received anything yet... it was horrible trying to explain that it was a hoax and she'd given her personal details out)


There are of course the RINGTONE/LOGO premier text services and in a week I probably receive about 20 -30 calls from customer's who have had all their credit taken by the (legitimate!!!???) companies.

in regards to cold calling, we used to get about 8 or 9 calls an evening until we registered our number with a company (i will try and find the number) and now we get none. the reason that the calls are sometimes silent is because they operate on a dial out computer that rings numbers randomly and if it connects to a 'live' person, transfers the call to a call centre where your friendly (usually Indian) sales advisors say, hello Mr/mrs... blah blah blah.
If the computer gets through to an answer machine, it drops the call.

I've also had the recorded advertised message cold caller, and if you screen your calls using an answer machine this is the most annoying of all as it tends to take up most of the answer machine's memory or tape.
 
garlico said:
Then ther's the one where you receive a text message that says:

From: service provider...

You are a winner! to claim you prize simply text your:

Name:
Address (including postcode):
Your date of birth:
Your mother's maiden name

to: 87***
Click to expand...

Thats an interesting one as it would be a good first step to identity theft - esp. as you mother's maiden name is the most commonly used password reminder.

Emps
 
How about this one:

My mobile beeped yesterday and it said "Business card received." So I pressed "View" and it said:

Sammy;
0xxx xxxxxxx (didn't get the number)

I can't find it on my phone now. Presumably you then call "Sammy;" and it's a premium-rate number.
 
hallybods said:
In a space of a month we had three phone calls stating that we had won one of hundreds of really wonderful prizes. We had to ring a primium line to find out what we had won. It's funny how they fail to mention how much the phone call would cost you.

Now the logic of this is that if I had won something, wouldn't they know what my prize was? The first was a message on my answer phone, the second a recorded message and the third was an actual person. They didn't ring back after being told what to do with their prizes.
Click to expand...

not phone-related, but i like the junk mail you get saying that you've won £1,000 and they'll send it to you if you send them £5. i feel like writing back and telling them to send me £995. :D
 
I've just been sent this. By a guy who works in our IT dept.

----------------------------------------
Subject: Mobile Phone Warning

All mobile users pay attention if you receive a phone call and your mobile phone displays ( ACE ) on the screen. Don't answer the call END THE CALL IMMEDIATELY. If you answer the call your phone will be infected by a virus.

This virus will erase all IMEI and IMSI information from both your phone and your SIM card which will make your phone unable to connect with the telephone network. You will have to buy a new phone. This information has been confirmed by both Motorola and Nokia. There are over 3 Million mobile phones being infected by this virus in USA now. You can also check this news in the CNN web site.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS PIECE OF INFORMATION
-----------------------------------------

I'm shocked he didn't even google to see if it was true.

Which, of course, it isn't
 
I received an odd call the other night. After a second or too of silence, a recorded message came on saying "Congratulations you have won a £xxxxx holiday voucher. Please press 1 for...." at which point I hung up. I'm certain the call wouldn't have cost me any money but it probably would have tried to get me to call a premium rate number at some point.
 
Our phone rang yesterday evening; when the bf picked it up, he heard a recording say "Sorry, this message is meant to be left on an answering machine." How's that for nerve?!

:wtf:

(actually, that reminds me; I was going to look that number up and give them hell)
 
With my first mobile, I registered it with Vodafone, to get the free credit, but every so often I'd get junk text mainly from Vodafone. Which, I suppose I could put up with, for the extra credit. But then I started getting texts from dating companies and the like. Grrrrrr :mad: Vodafone selling them my number. I now have a new phone that I haven't registered and I am now Spam free!
 
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