[Tenhens]

Not sure how long this has been happening but be aware that scammers are calling people with a pre recorded message telling them that your account will be debited £39.99 and to press 'one' to speak to an  'operator ' who asks for your bank details so they can supposedly check that the payment is not taken. They then have your details to help themselves.

Be careful!!

[mumofstig]

Yes, it has started again  I first posted about it in November
https://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=131236.msg1522224#msg1522224

[Growster...]

Aunt Sally mentioned a 'Call Guardian' on her phone when Mum posted this last year!

It really does work, and when I have less time, I can scroll down to all the scam calls and see quite a few from abroad, even Sussex sometimes!

[WeavingGryphon]

Have you tried being really weird to them?

We had the BT scammers calling up from abroad recently. We're not with BT.
Husband got sworn at and hung up on when he started raving about all the lights flickering on the modem and it being their fault. I was in a mood when they caught me and told the one who called me to stop perving on us in his underwear from behind our hedge. It was inappropriate and he shouldn't be doing it. The neighbours were complaining and wanting us to take the hedge out so he had nowhere to hide because we weren't the only one not wanting to see him in his nasty Y-fronts. And we don't want to take out the hedge because it was really good for the bees and wildlife and that's really important to us. He went really quiet and ended the call. We got taken off that scammers to call list afterwards.

[mrs bouquet]

My 'phone is by Sky, and callers have to tell the machine who they are, then the machine tells me, then I can accept or reject.  It seems to work ok.    Mrs B

[rowlandwells]

I've got a good cure for pervs its called a stick struck in the right place its wonders what my big stick can do  when my wife was a post person there was a perv who jumped out from a hedge  showing his wears to a post lady who was picking up the afternoon post from a local post box

it rally upset the lady concerned and the Royal Mail moved the post box to another location I went looking for the person with my trusty stick because where it happened was on my wife's  run but he never came back PITTY

as for the scammers yes we have our many callers and I can understand how people get caught because its very frustrating for some people thinking  there's something wrong with there bank because  all they want to do is put what they are told is wrong rite its a sad state of affairs when people loose there life savings to the scum scammers

[JayG]

These scammers are so good at disguising and also changing their phone numbers that the use of Telephone Preference Service and in my case, my ISP's Call Protect service as well, are only of limited use, so
I have to decide whether the caller's number is known to me (via my phone's directory) or whether it's likely to be a scam call and therefore not answered (doesn't stop the phone ringing though.)

Call Guardian phones take the protection a stage further, as has already been mentioned in this thread - a friend of mine has one and it works very well, although I think I'm correct in saying that scammers who routinely change their 'spoofed' numbers still have to be manually rejected the first time they use a new number.

[Goosegirl]

I would never trust anyone who rings or e-mails me to say there is something wrong with my PC, bank account details or whatever. I'd even be very wary if I got an e-mail to say my BT account was going to be closed unless I opened it to find out why. Had that before and am now hopefully very savvy.

[WeavingGryphon]

I've just had a few Netflix email scams arrive.

The main thing to remember is official emails will have your name on it. They know who you are, scammers as a rule won't-I was told that by a bank. I've never seen one use my name but they do use my email.

Don't give any details over the phone. Just because they say they are someone, doesn't mean they are telling you the truth. The bank will forgive you if you say you could be a scammer I'll call back later. If they hassle you, hang up, scammers want to fluster you. Try your bank after some time, once they've got bored and moved on to the next time.

Did anyone hear about the fake estate agents and the estate agents being hacked?
People were setting up what looked like valid estate agencies, selling houses that were legitimately for sale. Instead of paying mortgages on to the seller they were keeping all the money, abandoning the business and clearing off with the money. The person who was speaking of their experience on the programme I saw had moved in and months later got an eviction notice from the seller for failure to pay. Contacted the seller to say why!? Proved they'd handed the money over so they went into the estate agents only to find the place abandoned.

There was also people and their estate agents whose emails were hacked and a very similar email to the estate agents was set up. They'd be in 1 digit off or something missing. When the buyer was due to send money over the scammers would email on the fake account pretending to be the estate agent asking the seller to send it to a different account. They've made off with a good portion of the mortgage. If they clear the fake account quickly their untraceable.

I'll pick on Goosegirl to use as an example this is not her email, I just made it up.
Goosegirlsitsinraspberries@rubusmuncher.co.uk would be faked to  Go0segirlsitsinraspberries@rubusmuncher.co.uk (o to 0) or 
Gocsegirlsitsinraspberries@rubusmuncher.co.uk (0 to c)
Goosegirlsitsiraspberries@rubusmuncher.co.uk (n removed) or  Goosegirlsitsinraspberries@rubusmuncher.co.uk (r removed)
Goosegirlsitsirraspberries@rubusmuncher.co.uk (n substituted for an r).

If your not expecting it  would you really spot the difference? Give those examples a quick scan they all look really similar.

Modify to add, Amazon prime spammers got someone to add software onto their phone that allowed them to access everything on it. So they could clear her account.

[jezza]

Hello I had Amazon trying to tell me that they were taking money I informed the bank any Amazon activity is automatically blocked then I get an email from the bank asking if it's an authorized transaction I tell them no the bank then pass it to their fraud department  I've recently been scammed by people off this site saying I needed to pay a subscription and asked for my bank details I found out it was from an Indian company  jezza

[John]

I've recently been scammed by people off this site saying I needed to pay a subscription and asked for my bank details I found out it was from an Indian company  jezza

I assume you mean Amazon, Jezza - not this web site We don't charge a subscription for anything.. good idea though, I could do with the money 
It's quite a common scam (Amazon), there were people on the radio the other day who were taken on this one.

[WeavingGryphon]

BBC "Rip of Britain" goes into scams a lot if people want to find out about about scams, how to spot, avoid, or do if you suspect your maybe having a spot of trouble.
I knew someone who was fooled by Talk Talk scammers. Where Talktalk was hacked the scammers pretended to be the company and got access to their computer. The person twigged part way through but it was after the scammers got access to the laptop and were playing remotely with it. They switched the laptop off then offline. The scammers started calling until the phone rang out and then called again. If the victim picked up the phone the scammers were screaming at them to put the laptop on in a very pushy aggressive manner. It went on for hours. The victim couldn't call for help to get the laptop cleaned because the phone line was jammed. We leant them a mobile and it got sorted out, but it was rather horrible.

Useful BBC links
Scams, how to avoid being scammed-has fact sheets
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01fw00s

Rip of Britain - I think that's where I saw about the estate agent scams.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wck32

"You've been scammed "
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pcvv4/episodes/guide

The real hustle
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006m8mf

Age UK page on it
https://www.ageuk.org.uk/barnet/our-services/latest-scams/

[Tenhens]

I've just had a few Netflix email scams arrive.

The main thing to remember is official emails will have your name on it. They know who you are, scammers as a rule won't-I was told that by a bank. I've never seen one use my name but they do use my email.

We had a email  supposedly from tv licencing guilty of this . Nasty individuals

[WeavingGryphon]

I've just had a few Netflix email scams arrive.

The main thing to remember is official emails will have your name on it. They know who you are, scammers as a rule won't-I was told that by a bank. I've never seen one use my name but they do use my email.

We had a email  supposedly from tv licencing guilty of this . Nasty individuals

I get those and some of the domains are nothing short of awful and horrifing. I often wave the mouse over the domains to see where they are from and one of the first TV license scams I got was pallitivecare.domain . I was completely horrified. The mindset of someone to set out to do these scams and name the address that.

[Growster...]

It isn't rocket science to pull any old email address out of the air; lots of people just use their own name and the domain name, so a simple algorithm dreamed up by a nerd will make up any names from the telephone directory, add a domain, and Bob's your auntie.

I can immediately spot a scammer as my email address isn't conventional enough for them to bother, although some beauty from China (possibly Russia), sent me some lovely photographs... (it took me ages to find them in the bin...)!

And it called me by a ridiculous name...Ha ha ha!