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Phone Weirdness

Ever notice when you visit different sites, they are now requesting your permission to allow their ads to be shown?
I believe that's what it is, they are grabbing our info and tracking us, then bombarding us with their ads.
 
Ever notice when you visit different sites, they are now requesting your permission to allow their ads to be shown?
I believe that's what it is, they are grabbing our info and tracking us, then bombarding us with their ads.
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) (2016) introduced by Europe and the UK means that websites have to ask permission before putting cookies onto your browser. Some sites don't like giving the choice and so will bar viewing of their content by Europeans or anyone with an active ad-blocker.
 
Hmmm. Just got back to find a message left on my answering machine, purportedly from Sky.
Polite-sounding, clear message saying that Sky had found a fault with my phone line and they had fixed it (no signs of excavation outside). Then the message mentioned my daughter Inge... apparently, 'Inge' had spoken to them about the problem. Nobody here called Inge and I don't have a daughter.
Checked the number online and it does look like a Sky service number - but crims can spoof a number to make it look legit.
 
More phone weirdness! This morning, I was languishing in bed because I am not in work today. I heard a beep next to me and thought 'what was that?' - checked my mobile phone, only to find that it had switched itself on!
I actually turn off my phone at night, and I most definitely did not forget to do so last night.

Disturbing.
 
I turn my phone off at night too.
It has never switched itself on though. Are you sure you had actually turned it off? And if so, how on earth did it manage to turn itself back on?
 
I turn my phone off at night too.
It has never switched itself on though. Are you sure you had actually turned it off? And if so, how on earth did it manage to turn itself back on?
Pretty sure I did turn it off. I'm a creature of habit, so I always do this.
Dunno how or why. Maybe something to do with the emergency messaging system, which can wake up phones. Maybe someone was testing it or hacking it.
 
Pretty sure I did turn it off. I'm a creature of habit, so I always do this.
Dunno how or why. Maybe something to do with the emergency messaging system, which can wake up phones. Maybe someone was testing it or hacking it.
But not if you take the battery out. If it wakes up then, you have a poltergeist problem... ;)
 
The scammers will send out texts that have dodgy links, which would be a problem if you had an app-capable smartphone.
But you don't, so they're barking up the wrong tree.
Received a text on my non-smart phone with a verification code from Blizzard Entertainment. So now I can go ahead with doing something somewhere.
 
Odd how scammers and the like only pop up a few hours after BT send me a message. Can only guess that either BT are selling the lists or have been comprehensively hacked.
Yep I just got a new phone from O2 and had a right faff trying to actually go through the process of upgrading to it. Within about an hour of me messaging O2 on Twitter (privately!) I got a call from someone claiming to be O2 and telling me I could get money off my phone. It was very clearly a scam caller but it made me wonder if he'd somehow got my details from O2 themselves by hacking or whatever. I haven't had a call about a mobile phone like that for about 2 years so it was utterly bizarre to get it at that moment.
And I hadn't even told anyone either electronically or out loud that I was upgrading to a new phone - the only things I'd done were try to do it on the O2 website and then direct message them on Twitter about it.
 
agents operators or subcontracted call centre or messaging handlers selling lists of customer details out the back door
 
Received a text on my non-smart phone with a verification code from Blizzard Entertainment. So now I can go ahead with doing something somewhere.
Blizzard accounts - especially for World of Warcraft are targetted for attack a lot as they can be used to spam "gold" in game and steal folks in game assets. If you've never had one it may be that someone has registered a "trial" account to your e-mail for purposes of in game spam. If so expect to get a Blizzard e-mail saying your account is blocked pretty soon as they are fairly hot on it.
 
These odd text messages remind me of the time a friend got a call - ostensibly from a high-ranking security guy at his cable/internet company - saying they had detected signs of the Sub7 remote control trojan coming from his computer, and it might be a threat to the rest of the network. The man recommended my friend go to a particular place to download a particular program that could remove it. The friend called the company to confirm the man's name, which they did, but they could find no record of the suspicious activity, nor did they think it was routine for him to call customers. With my help he downloaded the cleaner from another site, and surprise! No Sub7.

Coincidentally, around the same time I read a short article in a hacker's magazine that said the best way to find out if the Sub7 slave program is on your machine is to actually install the Sub7 controller and see if it spots the program on your own machine. I wonder what the caller would have made of that idea.
 
The scam callers here always say there's something wrong with my Telstra internet. I reply " Why are you calling me as I don't have Telstra?"
Sometimes I'm less polite.
 
Had a private number call me at work yesterday so I decided to answer for the fun of it.

Silence and then the most terrifying sounding voice started speaking/singing!

It sounded like either someone impersonating a little girl with a high pitched squeaky voice, or the most evil sounding robot. I couldn't swear that English was being spoken the sound was slightly muffled.

Anyway, it went on long enough that I had time to let my employee have a listen (just so she could share the terror)

Then it stopped.
 
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