This scam is STILL doing the rounds

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
I can't believe this but people are still getting scammed by this old perennial scam.

Unsolicited phone call says something like this "Due to illegal activity your ISP will disconnect your Internet in the next 48 hours --please press XX ...... etc etc"

Once you've pressed XX or whatever -- you've given away "The keys to the kingdom".

If you WERE doing illegal detectable activities the ISP would contact you directly -- either by email or by "Snail Mail" or both and at least have details of your account -- or if they did phone it would be a direct verifiable call from the ISP and not an unsolicited unidentified caller one.

I'm still amazed how so many people get scammed by these really obvious ones-- remember "The price of Education might be expensive -- but the price of ignorance is Astronomical"

Please guys here don't get scammed -- whatever the scam is and if you hear of other ones doing the rounds do post details.

Cheers
jimbo

I just finished a block on browser tool bars on my Mother's computer.
I counted 17 toolbar (coupon scams).

jimbo45 said:

I can't believe this but people are still getting scammed by this old perennial scam.

Unsolicited phone call says something like this "Due to illegal activity your ISP will disconnect your Internet in the next 48 hours --please press XX ...... etc etc"

Once you've pressed XX or whatever -- you've given away "The keys to the kingdom".

If you WERE doing illegal detectable activities the ISP would contact you directly -- either by email or by "Snail Mail" or both and at least have details of your account -- or if they did phone it would be a direct verifiable call from the ISP and not an unsolicited unidentified caller one.

I'm still amazed how so many people get scammed by these really obvious ones-- remember "The price of Education might be expensive -- but the price of ignorance is Astronomical"

Please guys here don't get scammed -- whatever the scam is and if you hear of other ones doing the rounds do post details.

Cheers
jimbo

There seems to be a new push on this one, I've not received any scam calls in months but I've had this one every day this week.

If it carry's on I may need to turn my call guardian spam blocker back on.

I've just had another one - my call guardian spam call blocker has now been turned back on.

Scams have been going since the first person rung the sweat out of his loincloth into a hollow gourd and sold it as a cure all for "what ails ye". Unfortunately scams only work because people are stupid, greedy, ignorant or a combination of all three.
The boom in the always connected technology just allows the scammers to become anonymous, the scams don't really change at their core, it's still "get this for free" or "pay this or else".....
If you did not initiate contact treat it as a scam, this applies to phone calls, e-mails, texts, letters.
If in doubt make contact with the company yourself, through officially listed methods.
No reputable company will ever ask you for your passwords in an email or text or phone call.
If a web form asks for your login details, check there is HTTPS in the address bar and the padlock icon (the S stands for SECURE), check the spelling of the address when you hover over a link, common spoofed sites tend to use an extra letter in the spelling, or substitute a number for a letter, for example 0 (zero) for the letter o.
If you click the padlock it will show you details about the site, if it looks fishy don't submit any details.
This applies to Edge, not sure about other browsers but should be similar.

@badcrc "If you press 1, you are redialed to a premium rate number..." I've wondered how the scammers do that, do they find a way to mute the redialing beeps?