Email Scams In This Section

[Broseph]

Doesn't anyone actually string these idiots along wasting their time and taking them away from real potential victims or do we just post the scams for no real reason?

[Sycamore3House]

If I get a call from an India sounding person telling me they are from Microsoft I usually string them along. Because I now only have Apple devices. So I will tell them I am going to find my windows computer. They usually phone just as I return from food shopping. and then I put the shopping away and do loads of jobs whilst looking for this machine and keep going back to the phone to give updates etc. The last call lasted 40 minutes and was terminated by them when I told them I did not have a computer or wifi.

[woofgang]

nope. I don't answer the phone unless I know who it is and I delete phishing emails. Why would I waste my time?

[Canary42]

Scams are posted to raise awareness in others surely.

[Peter Pedant]

a friend got caught ish

so I sat beside the phone batting every call
and scammer rang every day for .... 21 days
I had nothing else to do as I had had a hip replaced

in the last week I went thro he wasnt there because
just slipped out
buying fish and chips
taking dog for a walk
gone to the library

and the fella down the other end started shouting
but not before he had said he was from the fraud section of my bank
and we had a barney over that

fraud sections of banks never ring you apparently

[Peter Pedant]

// Be very careful of the "your Bank Account has been hacked" type of call. //

banks never ring on this subject apparently

[Buenchico]

>>>fraud sections of banks never ring you apparently

Wrong!

I had a caller who claimed he was from Santander, alerting me to £800 having been removed from my account under suspicious circumstances. I was obviously very wary initially but it turned out that the call was GENUINE and someone had taken £200+ £300 + £300 from my account, using cash machines in Stratford, London. (My card was a 'cash machine only' card, not a debit card, so the thief can't have obtained my card details through any shop or online transaction. Further, I'd not used that account for over a year and my card hadn't left my wallet during that time).

Santander did refund the money but it does prove that at least some 'anti-fraud' calls are actually genuine!

[Davemano]

A recent case in our area resulted in a lady parting with several thousand pounds to the bank account of a fraudster who purported to be a police officer advising them to transfer the money for safety because they were investigating frauds from her bank. Be assured that neither the police or the banks operate in this manner, and if you receive such calls report them in person at your bank and the police. These fraudsters are very convincing, so BEWARE.

[fiction-factory]

And stringing email scammers along is not a good idea.First it shows that have got a valid address; second if you click on any attachment (which you'd need to do to get/give enough details to string them along) you are asking for trouble with viruses etc

[woofgang]

I too have been phoned by the fraud section of my credit card. (not santander)I got an answerphone message and rather than phone the number left, I Phoned the number on my credit card. The call was genuine and saved my card getting maxed out by the thief which would have been annoying to say the least.

[1ozzy]

Even though I'm in a different country I had a call from my bank on the way home once to question many rather large transactions on my credit card at many different shops.
They were suspicious.
I'd been on a spending spree.
I was glad to see they were vigilant.

[Retrochic]

Santander do call for any little thing. Its annoying when you buy something 'unusually expensive' (from their point of view) and they decline your card even though their is plenty of money on it. This has happened to me a few times

[hc4361]

I had a call from Tesco bank about an attempted expensive purchase on my card. That was genuinely from Tesco.

[hc4361]

I had a similar scam to the Microsoft one. I had a call from a Virgin helpline telling me there was a fault, my broadband was running slow and he wanted to help put it right.
He couldn't tell me my name, account number or anything else, claiming that Virgin had passed my number on to the helpline and that was all the information they had.

I was very wary anyway but when he asked me to log in to Teamview I knew it was a scam. Virgin don't use that, they don't need to. I accused him of being a scammer and he hung up.

[zebo]

I once had a call from Sainsbury's bank about a transaction they were suspicious about, I couldn't place it until I realised it was for a hotel booking that was routed through a site in Turkey. I've warned everyone never to start a call to me with the word Hi, I hang up immediately.