Another Scam

[miss mouse]

[Herbidacious]

I just had a phone call from someone telling me he was from Visa card fraud department and that there has been suspicious activity on my card - someone trying to make a payment for £950 from amazon. He spoke slowly and clearly. Middle aged, English, accentless quite dour white bloke, I'd say, and gave a full name. When it got to take details I asked if he'd mind very much if I rang Visa back myself. He put the phone down.
Not really worth chasing up, is it? It's disconcerting though. The only thing that made me ask this was because it's my practise to do this. There was nothing in his demeanour. Some psychology thing kicks in. 'Could this be genuine?' 'I don't want to get it wrong/offend.' I suppose at base, other things being equal, the only reason not to believe him is that this kind of fraud exists and this raises the probability of it being exactly that. Nothing else does.
I should tell me my mother about this one, and reinforce that she should always ask to ring back. Nothing is sticking in her brain these days though.

edited for loads of typos

[suffolk]

Maybe alert Visa to the fact that she’s elderly /vulnerable and they should be alert to unusual activity on her card?

At least if you’ve flagged it up to them they can’t say they didn’t know.

[earthmaiden]

I agree with Suffs re your mother.

I have had genuine phone calls regarding fraudulent use of my card in the past. A pitfall was that they asked some security details to check they were speaking to the right person so I called back using the proper bank phone number and got transferred back to the fraud dept to be safe.

Nowadays they send a text message and ask if you've just made the purchase and you text yes or no back. If your bank has your mobile number I'd expect them to do the same. I suppose the text could be part of the scam but they'd have to have your mobile number as well as bank card number. Sometimes they ask you to call them and again, I don't use the number provided until I have checked with the bank. Also, they usually block the card nowadays until you've confirmed your purchase was genuine so if your caller didn't check who you were or block your card it sounds dodgy. I would call the bank to check.

[miss mouse]

[Herbidacious]

Even if I rang another number, Miss Mouse? Any other number?
Can you explain this further?

[Herbidacious]

I can try and ring her bank. Need to find out what banking operating policy is. Would they really contact you if a large and uncharacteristic sum was attempting to be put through/had been spent?
They are very lackadaisical with small sums.

[smitch]

[Herbidacious]

Well I suppose if one doesn't ring immediately it's ok? I mean if I ring my mother afterwards, which I did, I will know whether it's her or not? Or am I missing something?

This guy cut me off anyway...

I did just call my mother and she seems alert to all of this, so I am reassured. She also seemed more alert full stop than she has in ages, which is also reassuring (new meds must be kicking in.) However I will tell her the phoning back thing. I think her usual approach is to just ignore the whole scam thing and not follow it up. She doesn't have an option to us another phone line.

[PatsyMFagan]

[Herbidacious]

If by John Lewis, any spend I made in there at one point, triggered a fraud alert with my bank. At one point, there was clearly deemed to be some issue with them.

[earthmaiden]

Some of these people are just too darned clever! If I spend an unusual amount, especially with a payee I don't use regularly, my bank always send a text and block my card until I confirm. It's quite annoying sometimes!

[miss mouse]

[miss mouse]

[Herbidacious]

I doubt they could immitate my mother...

This is based on the thing where if you ring someone and they don't ring off when you do, their conection remains open? Or something else.

In this instance he disconnected, anyway.

[Herbidacious]

For reference from BT:
7.1. Terminal Initiated Clearing
7.1.1. By The Calling Terminal
When a call is ended by the calling terminal, the BT network interface will detect an off-line
condition (see section 3.1 Off-Line d.c. Condition) and provide the network initiated clearing
(see section 7.2 Network Initiated Clearing) to the called terminal. Line breaks of less than
200 ms will not be recognised as a clear. Line breaks greater than 3 s will be recognised as a
clear (see section 10.1 Follow-on Call).

7.1.2. By The Called Terminal
When a call is ended by the called terminal, the BT network interface will detect an off-line
condition (see section 3.1 Off-line d.c. Condition) and initiate a time-out process lasting
between two seconds and three minutes. After the time-out period has expired, network
initiated clearing (see section 7.2 Network Initiated Clearing) is provided to the calling
terminal.

I think was this means is that the call will be terminated after a very short gap so the line can't be kept open by the other party.

But maybe this is not how the scam works. Was just curious how it did work. Can't find anything about it online.

[smitch]

There is some information on this article

[Herbidacious]

thank you!

[miss mouse]

[Herbidacious]

In this instance, not, though.

[earthmaiden]

I have just seen a scam where a very convincing page is sent by text or possibly email and invites people to enter their postcode to claim £258 which UKGOV has agreed to pay out to everyone during the COVID-19 period. ' The cosmetically correct scam UK GOV site goes on to try to harvest personal data with this promise of a payment. Please warn those you think may be vulnerable.'

I have tried to copy it to paste on here but I can't find a format Wildfood will allow. It could fool a lot of people .