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Post by moonraker on Jan 21, 2023 16:56:11 GMT
AT 0810 this morning my landline rang. I usually ignore such calls as nowadays I rely on my mobile, but an elderly neighbour does call me it on very occasionally, and only yesterday had we discussed another neighbour's poor health, so I thought that it might be an urgent update.. Turned out that the call was a recorded message from a slightly breathless woman warning me of a suspect payment of some £750 on my Amazon account and imploring me to press "1" to sort it out. I have bought a very few items on Amazon, so I suppose that qualifies me as an account-holder, but I didn't believe her. I suspect that had I pressed "1" I would have incurred a hefty addition to my telephone bill.
The message was very convincing and I fear must have fooled many people.
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agent69
Member of DD Central
Posts: 6,043 
Likes: 4,437
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Post by agent69 on Jan 21, 2023 17:48:19 GMT
AT 0810 this morning my landline rang. I usually ignore such calls as nowadays I rely on my mobile, but an elderly neighbour does call me it on very occasionally, and only yesterday had we discussed another neighbour's poor health, so I thought that it might be an urgent update.. Turned out that the call was a recorded message from a slightly breathless woman warning me of a suspect payment of some £750 on my Amazon account and imploring me to press "1" to sort it out. I have bought a very few items on Amazon, so I suppose that qualifies me as an account-holder, but I didn't believe her. I suspect that had I pressed "1" I would have incurred a hefty addition to my telephone bill.
The message was very convincing and I fear must have fooled many people.
One of the drawbacks of being retired is that you are often home when some halfwit knocks on the door and tries to sell you something. Additionally, you are also there when the phone goes and somebody from Amazon / Microsoft / your bank phone to tell you that you have an urgent problem that they can help you with.
Never found any of them particularly convincing.
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Post by moonraker on Jan 22, 2023 10:24:23 GMT
Overnight an email arrived, warning "Your xyz123@abc.com account on FixMyStreet has been inactive for 23 months, and we automatically remove accounts that have been inactive after 24 months. If you wish to keep your account, please log in to the site and that will keep it active".
My immediate reaction was that this was a scam, then I recalled that a couple of years ago I had a registered a problem with a local council about idiots parking on the roadside at the top of a hill with a blind bend so that they could exercise during Lockdown. (Mine was one of many complaints, and a little while later double yellow lines were painted.)
Not only do spam calls victimise the elderly and vulnerable, they cause inconvience and stress for the less able who struggle to get to the phone, only to find there's no-one at the other end or, if there is, they're crooks.
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Post by moonraker on Jan 26, 2023 11:46:02 GMT
I'm still getting a dozen or more spam emails a day from a couple of very similar alphanumeric addresses offering American-focussed products. I must have had fifty about "Camp Lejeune victims" (some sort of class action, I think). Spookily the latest was about a medical condition that I've just been diagnosed with, and which has been the subject of a number of personal and medical emails. These spam scams are proliferating, sometimes with duplication or triplication of the same email each day, all from almost-identical alphanumeric addresses that vary by just one or two digits in a numerical sequence that so far has got to 81. So no point in blocking any particular address. They all end up in my spam folder, where they would swamp any genuine email that finds its way there.
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Post by overthehill on Jan 27, 2023 10:49:31 GMT
Lot of useful background info in this report. From the bank's POV they have to be certain it isn't a fraudulent 'fraud' report with or without the phone owner's knowledge e.g. I see the girlfriend is also in the photo !!
Mobile phone fraud: 'They stole £22,500 using my banking app'
I would never keep bank apps on my main phone, mine mostly ONLY require a pin number and it might do an extra security check by sending a code to your phone, that'll work !!
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keitha
Member of DD Central
2024, hopefully the year I get out of P2P
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Post by keitha on Jan 27, 2023 11:31:38 GMT
Lot of useful background info in this report. From the bank's POV they have to be certain it isn't a fraudulent 'fraud' report with or without the phone owner's knowledge e.g. I see the girlfriend is also in the photo !!
Mobile phone fraud: 'They stole £22,500 using my banking app'
I would never keep bank apps on my main phone, mine mostly ONLY require a pin number and it might do an extra security check by sending a code to your phone, that'll work !!
agreed. I have the same issue with Hive, they keep pushing me to turn 2FA on which sends a code to your phone,  why would I be worried about someone turning my heating on ... more importantly as adrianc will attest out here in the sticks those codes can take an age to arrive, so say I'm on my allotment and ready to go home and want to turn the heating to boost waiting 10-15 minutes for a code is pointless before I get the code I will be home and can adjust the themostat
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2023 12:26:10 GMT
It appears that your phone's SIM card has its own PIN. When you stick it in your phone you can set it up to handshake with that PIN or not. Most do not.
Then imagine you lose your phone, it is passed to a rogue. He can't use your phone as it is locked, so he pops out your SIM and sticks it into his phone.
If you have not set up the SIM PIN as decribed, he can now access you phone, so that when your bank wants to solve his three failed attempts to access your account they get him and he sets up his own access.
Conclusion..
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Post by bernythedolt on Jan 27, 2023 18:48:16 GMT
My online banking is via laptop. I refuse to run banking apps on my phone (too easily lost/stolen), but the banks REALLY push for that now. This week, I've opened an account with First Direct. I was hoping their two-factor authentication would mirror other accounts I have, which simply text a one-time password (OTP) to my phone. I find that convenient, whereas a phone app to generate the 2FA is inconvenient, intrusive (tracks location, etc, etc), prone to loss/theft, requires yet another PIN/password to memorise and deprecates whenever the manufacturer withdraws support for your OS.
The alternative to FD's phone app - they don't even offer the text thing, I discovered - is to request a physical code generator (a credit card sized device) which takes two weeks to arrive. Yet FD no longer even advertise this device as an option, you have to ring them to find out. The impression given was the phone app is very much their preferred method, but they'll still offer the physical token to dinosaurs like me if pushed into a corner! Mine is on order.
What I haven't fathomed is why all the banks now push their phone apps so vigorously, when surely they must be less secure overall than (generally home-based) laptop/ desktop/ tablet coupled with an OTP or physical token generator? It's almost like they're inviting greater fraud...
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Post by moonraker on Feb 23, 2023 19:27:45 GMT
Today I got my TalkTalk bill for the last month and was startled to see four calls allegedly made on my landline in 62 minutes; one was relatively local to me, between three made to the same USA number 0015035841960. Total call time 36 minutes. I hardly ever use my landline nowadays, except to a neighbour whose phone won't recognise my mobile, and I was certain that I hadn't made these. I've had perhaps three "silent" calls this year, and have never, for example, pressed "1" in response to an "urgent" plea to confirm details of an account with an organisation, one I usually haven't traded with.
TalkTalk mistake, or something more sinister? All credit to the much-maligned company, it did refund the money without quibble and very promptly.
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keitha
Member of DD Central
2024, hopefully the year I get out of P2P
Posts: 4,587
Likes: 2,623
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Post by keitha on Mar 15, 2023 20:15:21 GMT
Had a cold call earlier claiming to be on behalf of my electricity supplier, who are giving grants to remove fibreglass and other old insulation and fit new insulation to the roof which will make the attic into usable space.
I asked a couple of questions and was told it should mostly be covered by the grant but I'll get a bill after the work is done, but it should not cost more than £8,000 !
After I said I wanted a quote up front for the work so I could ensure it was within budget she hung up
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Post by overthehill on Mar 27, 2023 22:34:07 GMT
NFT: Plans for Royal Mint produced token dropped by government
This next iteration virtual is beyond my comprehension. I certainly don't think NFT's can be thought of as certificates of ownership for the physical asset, more sloppy bbc reporting.
" The digital tokens, which emerged in 2014, can be thought of as certificates of ownership for virtual or physical assets, and can be bought using traditional currency or cryptocurrency. "
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Post by batchoy on Mar 28, 2023 6:26:47 GMT
NFT: Plans for Royal Mint produced token dropped by government
This next iteration virtual is beyond my comprehension. I certainly don't think NFT's can be thought of as certificates of ownership for the physical asset, more sloppy bbc reporting.
" The digital tokens, which emerged in 2014, can be thought of as certificates of ownership for virtual or physical assets, and can be bought using traditional currency or cryptocurrency. "
I've always thought of them more along the lines of buying a certificate of ownership for the Eiffel Tower from Victor Lustig
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Post by moonraker on Mar 28, 2023 8:50:48 GMT
I mustn't speak too soon but ... For the past three or four months I've had a daily flow of scam marketing emails into my spam box. (I've probably ranted about them before.) The sender uses a variety of alphanumeric addresses that often vary by one digit. Most have an American flavour and I must have had fifty about litigation concerning infected water at a US army camp.
But for the past five days not a single one.  Perhaps the sender has given up. I know that it takes only a couple of people to fall for the junk to make the practice worthwhile, but it must have been obvious to nearly everyone that a variety of unsolicited emails from very similar addresses must be highly suspect.
Curiously, three days ago two important emails from a relative found their way to my spam box after 18 years of her communications coming directly to me.
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Post by overthehill on Mar 28, 2023 10:49:20 GMT
I mustn't speak too soon but ... For the past three or four months I've had a daily flow of scam marketing emails into my spam box. (I've probably ranted about them before.) The sender uses a variety of alphanumeric addresses that often vary by one digit. Most have an American flavour and I must have had fifty about litigation concerning infected water at a US army camp.
But for the past five days not a single one. Perhaps the sender has given up. I know that it takes only a couple of people to fall for the junk to make the practice worthwhile, but it must have been obvious to nearly everyone that a variety of unsolicited emails from very similar addresses must be highly suspect.
Curiously, three days ago two important emails from a relative found their way to my spam box after 18 years of her communications coming directly to me.
I report every email which arrives in my spam folder and block them. Think my block list has a maximum of 2000 entries, if it doesn't shift old ones out when full I'll need to do a purge. As you say the email addresses are generated randomly, I'm waiting for the internet boffins to provide an ingenious solution to block this activity and save a lot of wasted electricity! You can block domain names as well which is a cleaner solution but you need to be sure that you're not interested in anything from that domain.
I also get a few genuine emails in my spam folder which is why I clean out both the spam and deleted folder everyday to easily monitor that possibility. Rather than block you can filter emails into another folder such as the deleted folder !
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Post by overthehill on Mar 28, 2023 10:55:59 GMT
NFT: Plans for Royal Mint produced token dropped by government
This next iteration virtual is beyond my comprehension. I certainly don't think NFT's can be thought of as certificates of ownership for the physical asset, more sloppy bbc reporting.
" The digital tokens, which emerged in 2014, can be thought of as certificates of ownership for virtual or physical assets, and can be bought using traditional currency or cryptocurrency. "
I've always thought of them more along the lines of buying a certificate of ownership for the Eiffel Tower from Victor Lustig wiki page on victor lustig already setup for reading later! No bells ringing from my extensive tv and film viewing, stll time for Netflix to put that right.
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why would I be worried about someone turning my heating on ...
Perhaps the sender has given up. I know that it takes only a couple of people to fall for the junk to make the practice worthwhile, but it must have been obvious to nearly everyone that a variety of unsolicited emails from very similar addresses must be highly suspect.