Veterans – watch out for scams

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In the United States today, we honor those who have served.  Unfortunately, it’s also a time when criminals target those who have been in our military
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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WCHS, Pepsiboy, pmcjr6142, Myst

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It’s not only Veterans that are being hit upon.

I have been receiving calls “from Medicare” which I more than suspect are scams. There is a “bleep” before the caller begins to speak (common to call scam call centers) and the caller speaks very broken English, “This is John/Steve/etc from Medicare.”

Medicare is not going to call you, even it’s the Enrollment Period. Hang up!!!

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Pepsiboy, Myst

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“We’ve been trying to contact you about your car’s extended warranty…”

Calls from “Microsoft”…

Fraud alerts from banks and credit unions in which I’ve never had accounts…

McAfee AV expiration…

Stirred and shaken have made a difference in SPAM calls.  If it doesn’t have a “[V]” preceding the caller ID I don’t pick up — and they leave no message. Problem solved.

Also, I’ve set my cell phone so that calls from numbers not in my contacts automatically roll over to voicemail.

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Not all over-the-phone scams begin with an incoming call.

A couple of years ago, my wife made a call to the Gap stores customer service dept, but undenounced to her, she had transposed 2 digits of the number she thought she was calling. We later verified this in her mobile phone recent call list.

The call was answered promptly by a friendly voice that said, “Welcome to customer service”. My wife naturally asked if it was Gap stores customer service and of course the answer was “Yes, how can we help you?” Things quickly spun out of control and a short time later she gave her credit card number to the scammers. I don’t know the excuse they used to justify asking for her CC number, but she was in a hurry and that didn’t help.

They kept her on the phone while they repeatedly made several charges to her card totaling around $250. Bank of America immediately flagged the charges as fraudulent and started sending text and email alerts to her suggesting she call the fraud alert phone number on the back of her credit card. She did and the bank had already frozen the card. Good work on their part.

The best thing is this fraud event didn’t cost her anything and it was a good wake-up call for both of us.

Again, it all started with an OUTGOING call.

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SueW, Tom in Az, Tem, Pepsiboy

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The scams that get sent to me are text message scams. My fav is the ol’, ‘Your netflix account is being suspended due to error in payment method.’ I don’t even have a netflix account… Another funny one is the one where they try to get you to check your account ‘because something went wrong/someone tried to access your account’ VIA text message, when the legit company doesn’t even do alerts through text.

All in all, we all get hit by them. Some of us use it for a laugh, considering every time I get one, I’m like, “These scammers aren’t even trying.’ Sad though that people DO get hit by these, my grandma for example, luckily we caught it quickly. and limited the damage.

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Also to add onto my post, a nice app for iphone, and perhaps android, is called TextKiller. It literally throws texts that don’t meet certain criteria, that you can even set up, into a junk folder and even mutes the ding when the junked text hits your phone. Best of all it’s even free.

Yes, I know it’s kinda advertising, but I use it myself, and go in every so often to clean the folder, and amazed at how many get junked.

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I very frequently get emails thanking me for a purchase with an attachment of some sort – mostly geek squad and McAfee, but others as well. It is either information fishing or ransomware but I wouldn’t know as I never click on the attachment. (most of these are in gmail’s spam folder, but some get through to my inbox. They are easy to spot.)

I do get the occasional “your social security account has been cancelled, call us for questions” – about once a month. I think some of these stem from ebay or amazon purchases where the seller gets your email addy. But who knows.

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I never answer a phone call unless I recognize the number displayed by caller id and am expecting that call.  My phone’s answering machine function seems to be an effective deterrent.  When scammers/spammers detect that the machine has answered their call they generally hang up without leaving a message.

 

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SueW, Myst, Microfix

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Same here.

 

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EricB wrote:

they generally hang up without leaving a message.

absolutely. We do the exact same, if the number is not in our phone directory, it’s left to the answering m/c.
They usually hang-up when the recorded message kick in..
‘welcome to the honeypot, this phonecall is being traced and recorded, please leave a message after the deafening high pitched tone’ 🙂

Win8.1/R2 Hybrid lives on..

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LH

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Most of my email scams go to Junk. Rarely see them until I go to the Junk box. Actually about 99.9% go directly to my junk pile. Calls are few and far between, and when they do hit the screen it’s recognized by my carrier as a Spam Risk. The playground of spam and hack is generally targeted by any person, or a conglomerate of one or more set ups through the internet of data brokers who have plucked your personal info from yuck sites (“Been Verified”, “Radaris”, “Whitepages” etc.). You can’t hide but you can have your info removed from their websites. At least try by going to each site and asking it be removed or get a really good AV (Norton) you trust that does it for you. Or change your identity and toss out all your devices and move to a remote island with no personal history or paperwork.

MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, and SOS at times.

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NaNoNyMouse

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I have an app on my phone that sends any incoming call, not on my contact list, to voicemail. Only very rarely will they leave a message and it’s easy to delete it. Makes life so much easier.

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WSbobby-p, Sueska

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@krism, That sounds like a real good idea. What apt do you use? When the non-contacts are sent directly to voicemail, does the phone ring? Thanks

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I tried a bunch a while back and settled on this one. Haven’t looked at others recently.

“Call Blocker” by Unknownphone.com Yes, it rings once then stops. It used to be quiet but something in it or android changed. I have Moto One 5G Ace on Android 12 , security update June 1, 2023, Google Play system update Oct 1 2023. Stock. I stopped flashing phones several years ago.

Call Blocker Version 3 last updated May 22, 2023.

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Sueska

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Scam e-mail that slips through my Spam filter. The email might have a number to call or a button to click, neither of which I do; I just send it to SPAM.
1) a failed Amazon transaction.
2) a problem with an Amazon Prime account, which I don’t have
3) you’ve received a $500 payment to PayPal
4) there’s a problem with your Net-Flix account, which I don’t have.
5) your AT&T e-mail needs to be updated with a new version.
6) your anti-virus subscription has expired (I don’t have an A/V subscription)

Phone calls (I hear a bleep before the recorded call begins) and I hang up as soon as I hear the bleep or the words “Senior Advisor,” “Medicare”, “Senior” or “Benefits”:
1) Senior Advisor: they are very persistent. 3-5 phone calls a day. I’ve taken to not answering the phone, so that I can get off their call list.
2) Medicare Benefits or Senior Benefits (something like that)

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Myst

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I would avoid answering any calls that appear suspicious. If you’re talking about a landline, let it go to voicemail. Same with calls that come through on a cellphone. Then Block/Delete.

MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, and SOS at times.

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SueW

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I get delivery scams from time to time.
This one came this morning and has been moved to spam folder by Gmail.

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gmail catches most of that junk for me, but not all. Must stay very alert!!!

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Last week I got a voice message on my landline from a person who claimed to be from CITI bank credit card about some account problem. I FIRST called the # that is on the back of the card itself. The fraud department looked at my account and said that NO PHONE CALL had been placed to my #. So then I called the # that was on the voicemail. It had an authentic sounding recorded intro and menu tree! I then terminated the call. Ye-ow!

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You done well up to a point but, returning the call to follow a trail, not so. Think about it..
Seek and ye shall find from Feb 2022: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/citibank-phishing-baits-customers-with-fake-suspension-alerts/

Win8.1/R2 Hybrid lives on..

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Thank you for the warning. However, I have never given any specific info to any incoming call. (This was a landline, so not worried about any malware) I always call back on a # I know is authentic. So far been safe and seem to be off the higher ($) tier sucker lists.  🙂

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Spam email goes to the spam folder I never read it.  Phone calls from numbers I don’t recognize I send to voicemail.  The one that leaves a message the most is “Hey I’m calling because your dunn and bradstreet score is so good we’re willing to offer you a loan up to $500k”.  No mention of interest or paying it back or what a dunn and bradstreet score is.  Very strange I assume it’s some boiler room set up to steal your identity.  They are the most persistent and I get these weird unsolicited whatsapp texts and calls every once in a while pretending to be hookers.  The guy who had my phone number before me used it for a lot of bad things so I get weird calls every once in a while from other time zones at weird times.  I have changed my phone number so many times my few remaining friends wouldn’t tolerate it again so I keep this one even with it’s colorful past.

 

My parents are boomers and I worry about them getting suckered.  Some of these attacks like sim swap there’s nothing you can do.

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