Talk Talk Scam

[Brian Hutchings]

I recently signed up with Talk-Talk and had had issues with quality and speed so was not surprised to receive a 'phone call from an Indian person to say that Talk-Talk had identified problems with my router. He gave me a web address to look at that appeared to show a log of many faults over a period of days.

He then said that there was a problem with my router and they would put a new one in the post and also give me £150 compensation for the problems. I started to get suspicious at this point an ended the call. He called me back within seconds to ask what the problem was and I again ended the call.

I called Talk-Talk to see if this was a genine call and they said that I had done the right thing in putting the 'phone down and explained that I would have been asked to receive a bank transfer of the £150 and that my bank account would then have been emptied within a couple of minutes.

I'm normally very astute with this sort of thing but the call was very convincing so please be on your guard!

 

[ProDave]

Thanks for posting.

But how does this sort of scam work? I often give people my bank account number etc so they can pay money IN. That information is after all on every cheque that I write. Knowing that information does not enable them to empty my bank account. So what extra information are these scams asking for that does allow them to empty your bank account?
 

 

[Lurch]

They piece bits of info together and then try and find more and more and build a profile. That's why it's called "phishing".

Basically they have your name and number, they call you with this scam and get your address to post your router to, then they get your bank details.

Now they have your bank details, name, address and phone number.

At this point they will probably also have managed to extract  some other info under the guise of their initial security questions, so they might have asked you for mothers maiden name etc.

Now they have enough info to try and impersonate you and get some passwords reset and/or initiate a transfer via phone banking.

This is why when someone rings me and starts asking for me to "confirm my details", even when I know who is calling, I don't play ball. I know who I am, you don't need to ask me for my security details if you rang me.

 

[Andy™]

This is why when someone rings me and starts asking for me to "confirm my details", even when I know who is calling, I don't play ball. I know who I am, you don't need to ask me for my security details if you rang me.

i ask them to confirm their details and start asking them questions...

 

[Brian Hutchings]

This person did not ask for any details and gave the impression that he didn't need to ask any questions because it was all on his PC screen. I started to smell a rat when he  got the phonetic alphabet completely wrong and changed the words 2 or 3 times. He did not ask for bank details although that may have beeen because I ended the call before he got that far.

 

[Kurt]

Mum got scammed with "talktalk cust service. She too had reported a router problem. They called and she joined teamviewer so the scammer was on her PC. She got suspiscious when he wanted bank details for service credit, she replied, she's on Direct Debit.... anyway it got a bit nasty after that (my mum would poke Tysons ear if she felkt like it) lol anyway as a parting shot they invoked syskey on her PC. Anyway a local PC lad unlocked it for her...... Funnily enough they rang back asking how her PC was , she told them to piss off.... hilarious