Forum Topic

Visa scam

Just received a phone call in one of those weird computer sounding voices about a £600 transaction on my Visa account - press this for that and that for something else. Hung up and phoned my bank who said this scam has been around for about 3 months, and the amount is always £600. Most banks seem to be affected.I dialed 1471; the phone number it was made from was 020 8264 6126, so I've added it to the Action Fraud data bank.

Elizabeth Balsom ● 1898d11 Comments

I must admit we never answer the landline these days. Anyone that knows us well or we needs to contact us will have our mobile numbers (and anyone else has one sentence to explain why they are calling if they've got hold of them) and my business contacts have my free inner London VoIP number; if anyone wants to contact us urgently on our landline they can leave a message (and I'll receive a text that one's been left).

Michael Ixer ● 1898d

May not be the case with this but a word of warning. Some of these scams don't fully disconnect once you hang up. They technically stay on the line and can listen in on the next call, which would normally be your bank. They can part get some of you r details, do this a couple of times and you might get enough information to pretend to be you and access your account(s).Best thing to do is physically turn off your phone and restart it before you call your bank.

Ben Rainbow ● 1898d

We've had that Amazon call a couple of times this week.  And emails telling us our TV licence renewal hasn't gone through.  There's always another one.

Jonathan Callaway ● 1898d

As Mike W says this is an industry wide global telecommunications problem caused by the introduction of internet telephony which allows people to spoof any telephone number. It is being worked on - there's some new protocols being implemented (SHAKEN and STIR 🙂) but implementastion by the FCC (in the US) and Ofcom (UK) is slow and needs international cooperation, so other solutions are being looked at. I don't see the situation getting better in the short term because as Openreach and others rollout fibre to the home all our fixed line telephones will be replaced with internet phone (VoIP, Voice over Internef Protocols) services provided by our ISPs during the next decade or so. Although it would be fraud or probably an offence under the Computer Misuse Act, and ISPs will put controls in place to stop it, I'm sure some "script kiddies" and local criminals will work out ways for spoofing using these new services ... Sorry, if this is more detailed than anyone wants, and apologies in advance to Mike W as I'm not fully up to speed in this area these days. Some additional reading for those with insomnia! In the meantime just don't trust any phone calls ... https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/new_ways_to/ https://www.dwt.com/insights/2020/10/fcc-stir-shaken-robocall-mitigation-plan-deadline https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/04/swapping-to-broadband-voip-from-a-uk-copper-home-phone-line.html

Michael Ixer ● 1898d

Thanks for that advice.It's so damned irritating getting up to answer the phone, then finding it's one of these creeps.

Elizabeth Balsom ● 1898d

The other one doing the rounds is Amazon have identified an order ref no xxxx to the value of £yyyy being charge to your debit card. Press 1 to cancel or 2 to talk to someone at our depot.Do not be tempted to press either number as it will link onto a high rate telephone number and rack up a significant charge on your phone bill.

Andy Pike ● 1898d

There is a lot of number spoofing in telecoms spam.  I work in this area and increasingly sophisticated approaches are taken to get around fraud monitoring as fraud monitoring itself becomes more sophisticated so I agree with Richard (as I so often do ;-) ).  The number is likely a genuine number - the servers the spammers use spoof national fixed and mobile numbers quite easily,  there are many variants.I work for an Aussie company and we have had customers hit with huge numbers of people calling them back after their number has been spoofed to the level they’ve had to block and change numbers...

Mike Warman ● 1898d

There are so many of these scams and you wonder why they bother - except that there are always some who are taken in.But ignore the number that is shown: there's a way of making it look like a genuine number but it almost never is.

Richard Carter ● 1898d

Hello Elizabeth,I had two calls this morning, one stating the problem with my Visa card (which I do not have) for £600!  The phone number was 020 8244 5827.  I hung up.The second one was two minutes later from 020 8557 0889 but the line was silent and I hung up.They certainly have been busy today.  Horrible!

Ivonne Holliday ● 1898d

There was a thread on this on Next Door. The person who reported it rang the number back and got an answering machine. Then she had a telephone call from a woman in Swansea whose number the fraudsters had cloned. So that 020 number may be legit, just illegally being used as an alias.

Catherine Schade ● 1898d

Elizabeth, I get them all the time. I put the phone down, but once I thought I would hang on and not answer, then all of a sudden a voice answered saying, hello who is it.

Barbara Stevens ● 1898d