UKC

Just had a unknown mobile call me .

Didn't answer as usual with unknown numbers.

Received a voice mail. 

Listened to it and caught a robot voice telling me that if  I don't press one ,  a warrant will be issued and I'll be arrested shortly.

I'm not in the best of moods .   I'd love to shove their phone right right up their arse and I mean RIGHT UP THEIR ARSE.

pity it's not so easy to find them

may i recommend a song?

ale storm's "f'ed with an anchor"  sounds how you're feeling

I had a live caller telling me about my arrest warrant - I burst out laughing so hard I could hardly put the phone down - must be dispiriting for them

OFCOM, TPS, phone companies, etc, police all toothless against phone scams. Bah!

I had a cold caller once and I asked him where he got my number. He admitted that they have an area code and then they just guess numbers after that.

I said "Seriously mate you need to get another job", he seemed a bit disgruntled and replied sarcastically "oh....thanks very much"

I often wonder if he ever took my advice!

I had one of those and got through to a real person, it was the HMRC telling me I was going to be taken to federal court and jailed over £1200 unpaid taxes, a little heavy handed I thought, I also pointed out that i'm taxed by PAYE so it might be my employer they want to speak to and also there is no such thing as a federal court in the UK, he hung up in the end and spoiled my fun.

 > I also pointed out that i'm taxed by PAYE so it might be my employer they want to speak to and also there is no such thing as a federal court in the UK, he hung up in the end and spoiled my fun.

Unfortunately you've given them enough information to refine the scam to make it more effective in the UK...

Yeah, of course, silly me, i'm the only source of information they have to refine a scam.

The scripts are so ridiculously implausible that i'm amazed anybody falls for them.

I just had one, from the National Crime Agency - my NI number was being used fraudulently and all my assets were going to be seized by 'the Department'.  Panic struck, of course, I had a chat and asked which 'Department' that was.  The National Crime Agency apparently. But that's not a Department I said.  HMRC was the next answer.  But the NCA isn't a part of HMRC I said.  At this point, this dedicated crusader against fraud hung up.  Shame that.  W****er.

I wonder if that is in part by design. You want someone fairly gullible so that they will go along with the whole thing. If it's too plausible to start with maybe more people will start interacting only to pull out later when the red flags appear. That means the fraudsters are tied up on the phone to people who they'll never get any money out of. If red flags are there from the start then anyone who doesn't hang up immediately is likely to be a payday. 

Maybe I'm giving them too much credit. 

Perhaps, I have run them through right to the point where they have given me bank account details to transfer money to, they do have an answer for everything but some of it is just total nonsense, i think they just prey on the vulnerable who get panicked as soon as they mention court, police, customs or HMRC etc.

I'm getting more and more of these. You can report scam or nuisance calls or texts by text to 7726. I'm on vodafone but I think this is a number for all UK carriers. I think (hope) they logged, investigate then ban the number.

I used to get these until I got a new phone that came with "call announcing", in that ANY numbers phoning me have to announce themselves (as per an answering machine) and ask for me to authorise the call. Unless I give special authorisation, this has to be done each time.

This system has eliminated cold callers and scams.

What I used to do to these scumbags before was either walk away and get on with life while they prattled on to thin air, or, if the devil was in me, pick up my "Acme Thunderer" - my late father's old refereeing whistle, kept near the phone - and give an almighty blast on it. Much better than attempting to either complain about or swear at them.

Nice idea - might try that next time I get a call from Italy!

I seem to get occasional calls from a +39 number - the only time I've ever answered, it was by accident and promptly hung up again, as I'm not risking them charging my account for accepting the calls.

We have an older version of these: https://shop.bt.com/products/bt4600-premium-nuisance-call-blocker---twin-08... - but still "powered by trueCall".  We have had zero nuisance or scam calls since we got them.  Part of the reason is that the outbound diallers that the nuisance callers/scammers use* detect the announcement request as an answerphone, and drop the call - there's no point wasting a live agent's time by connecting them to an answering machine.

I've never had anyone who had a genuine need to call us complain about the call announcing process.  GP surgeries, hospitals and the like are used to them because they deal with a fair few vulnerable patients for whom such automated call screening is nigh on essential.  Even tradesmen seem happy to use the system  After all, apart from the "operator" being a machine, it's really no different to calling a central switchboard and asking to be put through.

* I seriously doubt that the agents themselves "guess" the numbers: its quicker and cheaper to have a machine do that.

Interestingly I got just one call from a +39 shortly before Christmas. +39 is Italy. I had in fact recently submitted a tiny work report to a colleague in Germany, who was working with a customer in Italy and there was maybe a 1% chance that the end customer was calling me to discuss some aspect of the report (and 99% likely that they wouldn't do this as all their correspondence should be with my colleague in Germany). I was on annual leave anyway so I ignored it  

Yes I forgot about those.  

Thanks.

This is what I had always thought until recently. See
https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/how_do_you_properly_block_a_pho...

although in my case, it's an automated thingy that also connects to the answering machine and leaves a message. What I didn't describe in the thread, is that it seems to be a continuous loop of audio that just records on my voicemail for around 9 seconds. Say they have a voice recording that is 9 seconds long, saying "This is Octopus Energy, please call us on 01527 xyzabc to discuss your account". The recordings I've heard, start at a random point within that sentence and end roughly where that random point would have restarted! Bit unconvincing and crap  

There's a guy on Youtube that collects numbers off these people and gets them on a conference call with each other doing their spiel at each other, looks quite fun.

I've seen a channel where a guy hacks the hackers that call and try to get remote access to your computer , while pretending to be an old man or woman .

Its quite dry but parts are quite funny where he wipes their files and encrypts stuff , destroys their machines remotely while seeing what there trying to do to his virtual machine .

youtube.com/watch?v=duY7nhFAZ_k&

The only time you can be charged for accepting calls is when you're roaming, and only then if it's in your contract. All this 'I was charged a load of money for pressing 1' is bollocks too, it's impossible for a caller to make your network provider charge you extra.

Correct. The scammers use autodiallers and only connect calls answered by real people. Hence the rise of the automated announcement telling you to press a digit to connect to a real person. They often just work their way through numbers without caring if they're live or not. They simply pick a country code (UK +44) and a suitable theme ("Hi this is BT and we're going to cut off your internet unless you press 1") and start working their way up through the numbers. Normally spoofing a different random UK CLI each time.

Have you heard that the coronavirus is spread by 5G....

Lots of scam baiter channels on Youtube that are worth a watch for a giggle, Kitboga is perhaps the best of the lot, he just time wastes massively, his setup is pretty impressive from an IT point of view, fake banking systems, scripted Amazon websites that look like purchases have been made, fake google gift card portals etc.

Funnily enough I had a text awhile back perporting to be from my bank saying that i was about to go over drawn. Suspecting a scam I called them up on a seperate phone and told them of the message I'd just received.

Ironically it was true! The local council had accidentally taken double the ammount of council tax out of my account (don't ask it was all down to confusion over their glitchy and constantly crashing pnline pay in system) so I was £650 out of pocket.

Maybe he probably wishes he could. When I get such calls I am left with varying emotions. Sometimes it is pure anger, some of these calls are from people who are knowingly trying to defraud  you and would take all your life savings and more, these are the scum of the earth. Then you get the chancers, maybe selling gas or leccy and telling you they will get you the best price, well I grew up with Cavaet Emptor, and believe, non of this nonsense and depending on my mood might piss them around for awhile and see how frustrated I can make or I gently hang up. But then there are an awful lot and I just think your trapped in a shit job, and can see no way out, I am really glad I am not in your position spending 8 hours a day doing that.

A real problem with withheld numbers is that often people you need to speak with use them such as Police, Social care etc, I cannot believe TBH that the networks could not do more.

Reminds me of an email I had saying the the Metropolitan Police  and Interpol had detected files relating to terrorism on my PC.

It went on to say a warrant was about to be issued for my arrest and my PC would be seized but if I clicked a link and paid the fee specified the files would be deleted and no further action would be taken!

This being the way the Met and Interpol usually deal with potential terrorism.

Dave

Sadly, they are. And mostly because they come from abroad (mostly from the accents, somewhere in Asia, or maybe Bradford) with spoofed caller id.  Domestic telcos could do something about spoofed clid, but it would be expensive, and would we (the subscribers, taxpayers) want to fund that?

The UK networks could easily block anything incoming from abroad with a UK CLI. That might screw up some genuine callcentres, but they could always get their traffic into the UK via the internet or private circuit then breakout in the UK.  Spoofed CLIs in the UK could be dealt with in a similar fashion - only let your customers release their own CLI. The telcos (and OFCOM) know it's a problem because it's reducing customer confidence and thus reducing the number of answered calls which reduces their revenue. There's a consultation out on it.

I once had a call allegedly from HMRC saying that there was a warrant out for my arrest etc., etc.

I told him I couldn't spend too much time talking to him as I was rather busy investigating the affairs of various call centre companies in my capacity as a tax inspector. I was told to f@ck off