scammers again

hi my wife sarah m6pii was scamed 2 weeks ago for 500.00 she got her money back these peole are very clever get your mobile number  bank info yesterday i got a call the same sarah new that the voice  i slamed the phone down there call this site team veiwer all ways get there number on your on your phone  i was told that these scamers  have become riff there pick on  vunrable people and empty  a persons money  i was told this is rife since the covid i bought sarah a new 480sat  she loves it thank you for looking stay safe do radio paul m0kbd

Plenty of scammers about Paul and they're insidious sods. 

Glad you got sorted and what a lucky lady your wife is, nice new Kenwood! 


All the best mate,
Victor

Glad you got it sorted, Paul.

My paypal was hacked last year and because my bank account is linked to it they emptied £400 out of my savings and then closed the paypal account down hoping I wouldn't be able to do anything but luckily I received an email saying I paid this person that amount that brought it to my attention. I contacted paypal and explained what had happened and their fraud squad investigated it and 24hrs later I had my money back. (my bank were also contacted but they said paypal are on the ball and will sort it and theres no point investigating from there end as it would interfere with paypals) The lesson I learnt is have a separate bank account for online purchases that is empty and only transfer money to that account as and when you make purchases. Might be a bit of a faff but keeps my money safe. 73's Glen

hi thanks for everyones reply we had 2 more calls yesterday very convicing i put the phone down but got there numbers yes both different we will only now reply to messages carefully we has our loacal 2 meter lockdown net its been running for 365 days over 70 stations we have made a lot of great qso sarah has a lot of operating as 1 of 3 yls we hope to have a face to face meet uo when the corvid lockdown ends o i want to have ago of sarahs 480sat this week end thank for your help paul and sarah m0kbd m6pii stay safe do radio on our teesside net 11 on a morning 145.450

It is rife, I have heard many similar tales and had the fishing texts and emails that lead to this sort of thing too, I had a very convincing one from Barclays bank, the thing that gave it away is it's probably one of the only banks I have never used over the years.
It is time (sadly) to be a little more discerning who you take calls from, if you dont know the number don't answer it, if you dont recognise the sender delete it.

Have a card for online use, load it up when you are going to use it or a seperate account as already mentioned. These people rely on your good manners, they use them against you, the structured presentations these criminals use are not unlike sales presentations and many of the same techniques are used by them as are used in sales and marketing especially by less scrupulous companies over the years.
If you don't speak to them they have no way in, dont be polite and compliant when some man with a heavy West African accent calls claiming to be from the bank calls you, tell them where to get off instead.

If you look into African scams you will hear lots of harrowing tales as it's one of their favourites it seems, they even sent a courier out for mum's old friends card and pin number which they bullied her into giving them on the phone.
Their manner is another giveaway it may start polite and profesional but that never lasts, they soon become aggressive and demanding.
I have recently changed my own telephone number as once you start getting these types of calls it just increases or has done for me at least.
Familiarise yourself with these scams, it is often women or the elderly they target as they are a 'softer touch' it seems, for myself it now means I no longer take calls from those I don't know.

The software to hack your devices has now become so advanced they only have to call your phone, even if you dont answer they are in, fortunately that one is only in the hands of the security services and it is good old fashioned deception they are using for these scams. Your number one defense against this type of threat is your own awareness, if you understand how they operate it will stand out to you when it happens as unfortunately it is no longer "If" but "when" these days. Here is a link to the Which guide of popular banking scams, changed days!

Five banking scams to watch out for in 2021 – Which? News
https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/12/5-banking-scams-to-watch-out-for-in-2021/

I recently had a call from The Insulation Advisory Group. A male called Chris said who he was from & I asked who they advised for & was told he was new. I then asked did they not train you very well & received a stuttering 2 or 3 word reply that made no sense. So who do you work for Chris & silence. 

Looking online the Insulation Advisory Group are fraudsters & Chris who I spoke to was a computer generated response system.  Hence why he could only answer simple questions.

What amazes me is that for you/me to get a phone number we have to prove who we are and having billing address info etc.
 
It is my understanding that BT/Others sell "blocks/groups of numbers" and ask no questions.  This is why when you do a reverse call lookup etc. NO INFORMATION comes back.  This is how I gather these scammers/fraudsters/etc. get away with it.  You can't complain to Ofcom because you make complaints about Companies and not phone numbers.

This is a handy site for finding out who a "suspicious" caller is:

http://uk.whocalledme.net/

Lucky escape Paul, If in doubt always put down the phone and call the real company back. You can get your local branch number from the net. Never give personal details away

Woody wrote:

Lucky escape Paul, If in doubt always put down the phone and call the real company back. You can get your local branch number from the net. Never give personal details away

They can bypass you hanging up & redialling, to talk to the legitimate company, using a legitimate number. In fact some fraudsters  will ask you to do just that. As due to the way telephone exchanges work, if they do not hang up, then when you redial, you reconnect to the scammers. 

If in doubt, always try to use a different phone. Or if you cannot use a different phone leave it 15 minutes, at least, before dialling the legitimate number. 

The waiting time, is not related to how long they can keep the line open. It is related to how long they will probably wait. And if you call to quickly, they know who you are calling & just pretend to be them. 

The following is from Equifax, the credit reference company. 

[url=https://www.equifax.co.uk/resources/identity-protection/dealing-with-phishing-phone-scams.html#:~:text=If you can%2C call them,before you make another call.]https://www.equifax.co.uk/resources/identity-protection/dealing-with-phishing-phone-scams.html#:~:text=If%20you%20can%2C%20call%20them,before%20you%20make%20another%20call.[/url]

Quote :

If you’re worried, get the name of the person you’re speaking to, hang up and call the organisation directly. If you can, call them from a different phone as scammers can keep the phone line open. This means they can stay on the line and still hear you, even if you’ve ‘hung up’ on them. If it’s not possible to use another phone then wait for at least 10 minutes before you make another call.

Sad news, but the blunt and simple truth is we've inherently and blindly accepted certain 'realities' of connected devices (networked particularly) which are the same basic conveniences (for us) that are also 'magic bullets' in a scammer (scum grade hacker assisted) arsenal.  Their hacking partners wields the weapon with trigger being whatever exploitation of the weapon the scammer sees fit to employ.

So, in order of deadliness, our self inflicted helping hand to scammers and scum hackers are :-

1 - Our lazy/convenient tendency to leave devices to auto connect via N.A. on demand as app/function 'needs', rather than permit connection as needed and agreed to by user.

A great example of this transpires in certain OS's where it's easy to pass on a fake update that people blindly apply that has an underlying modified/extended replacement for say an IP stack or suchlike where the access API normally used implements a certain secure access use, but has a backdoor additional API which allows root level or better virtually unlimited means to exploit the stack and allow all manner of fake apps you're conned into upgrading to to subsequently pass traffic legitimately but also tunnel silently and through alternative routes, that traffic elsewhere.  The same vulnerability method can also enable far better if not unlimited remote access and with rooted style control/access grade potential.

2.  Again, convenience fuelled by laziness, how we ignorantly let apps 'retain' credentials data to enable fast authentication and recall of sites etc.  Given, as any Linux/Unix user can attest to, how easy it is to grab the user list and PW's and other authentication system on POSIX type environments that use simplistic or virtually no locked down access and file/system wide encryption of data and partitions, our dependency on convenience is the poison. Chalice we drink our network Kool Aid from, like the sheep we are.

Sure, such things shouldn't be a factor but since exploitation of opportunities is the tool of the legends of the self-made legitimate and semi legitimate success stories out there then it stands to reason that we'll always have the scum sucking low hanging fruit cockroaches who equally take advantage and we actually give them the bloody low hanging fruit.

That's why I employ (where there's necessary evil limited need for convenience NA and passing of authentication data) a very high level encrypted local and remote stored encrypted and obfuscated form technique of form.  Now in the event of the data being looked at in it's garbage form, there's countless levels of obfuscated data within encrypted data levels to navigate before you could ever get close to where a Turing style bruteforce attack and intuitive analysis of results for meaningful patterns/fragments had any hope of being vaguely achievable.

So it's all our own bloody fault on one level ultimately and also our own fault for becoming lazy b'stards that are stupid enough to use the convenience toys they will exploit and frequently do.

Sounds like you've opened that file I sent you.
For USD$1,000,000. You can have your business back.


The scams are getting bigger, big business and governments are being held for ransom.
Business and Gov IT should be kept separate from the internet where ever possible. That's what the military do, all the important IT is completely "off grid".

Spot on logic there - that's why whilst discrete alt networks of the darknet concept are far more powerful and potentially secure as much as alt p2p nets used for ultra high security. Worked on a few examples myself, so my experience predates the darknet idea people typically know of, but in principle, not so different and the fact most don't they even exist still adds to the inherent security.

Just as how the DLT complexes were often used additionally for secure nodes and interchanges/exchanges for ultra secure telegraphy and telephony back in the day, 'darknet' type alts are today's alternative to deep-level comms links. Now when tunnelled over HF or satellite, you're talking 'in plain sight' piggybacking that's still much like useless to a snooper without some serious insider obtained help or leaked info.

Remember how those number stations got looked at, by many, as decoys or frequency squatters etc - and some where just that, sending totally actual meaningless garbage, it hid the fact a few were actively high traffic delivery of secure traffic that in many cases still remains secure. After all, even if you demux the content, without context or a visible point of reference, it's meaningless garbage still to the snooper.

Am I showing my age now, I wonder?

If I happen, in a moment of distracted weakness (*a moment worthy of a major wrist slapping with a sledgehammer*), actually answer an unknown/withheld or alien displayed number - I've a nice inline box of audio tricks to screw up someone's hearing and silently induce a migraine in those suffer them (I know it works, as when I listened to it I rapidly developed a migrane and I'm very prone to them), but the nasties are removed from the side tone loop so I don't hear them. It also employs a very weird audio scrambler fed by entropy from ambient sounds relayed from the garden and various data from colour and various spot spectrum light sensors. The third source, ambient band noise from a radio astronomy setup. End result, my voice as heard goes the garbage at random, the local to me sidetone is intact, bloody drives them mad when they end up thinking it's their phone or headset or speakerphone acting up.

Throw in the triple echo where my mobile primarily uses speakerphone mode unless I disable on a call by call basis (it shares the same audio path as the inbuilt 446 transceiver) and you'd have one bad day trying to intimate me with an aggressive or bullying call. Funny thing is - the whole MCU coding ritual to finalise it took about as long as a typical necessary evil phone call. Experience with telephony and audio tech and DSP's helped no end there. Whilst I say it's in line, the actual board just squeezed into the phone shell without disturbing the five TxRx's (cellular x2, Bluetooth & WiFi, propriety digital UHF and a separate stock DMR UHF module) more by chance than by design.

Overkill as hell, but totally true to my way of doing stuff.

I'm actually quite intrigued, there were a few 747's in there but I get the basic idea. Your almost sounding like the Hannibal Lecter of the audio world.
I have a phone app that plays sound frequencies, its claimed hz range id from 1hz to 22000hz there are some extremely unpleasant pitches in there, some barely are audible but induce ringing in your ears that can last for a long time.

Similar in idea, that app. As for the humorous comparison, I actually based it on some old studies of actual acoustic experiments that were undertaken during the Cold War era and added my personal flair to it (if I could nuke cold callers.... I'd do it). If you're familiar with 'The IPCRESS file' movie and story, you'd probably not be overly shock to know that the self-destructive psych meltdown inducing method portrayed was a mere surface representation of what was actually experimented with by both sides during the Cold War - some really nasty stuff was seriously researched back then, stuff that made biological warfare look like kids chemistry. It was my research into those aspects which inspired my version on a very tame level.

My brother-in-law was recently scammed $12,000+ US Dollars from his bank account here in the USA.  The Scammer had a fake driver's license with his (the scammer's) picture ID and fake address on it.  

The scammer was at a bank 900+- miles (1448+- kilometers) from where my BIL lives when the money was withdrawn.  Was the info stolen from my BIL's cellphone?  Nobody seems to know.

One week ago the money had not been recovered or refunded and the crook remains uncaught.

2/CT/189