Sick of the endless stream of emails and phone calls you receive from scammers claiming to represent your bank? Amazon? Microsoft? Tax office? Police?
We sympathize – we are also sick for them, especially the landline call which can be a loved one for help or advice, and thus need to answer …
… But rarely, if ever, is there a familiar voice on the other end.
Perhaps you are one of the 40,000,000 viewers of the famous science-and-engineering YouTuber Mark Rubber’s video Pranks Scam Destroys Collars – Glitterbomb Payback?
Rober only claims how much money is something worrying but completely believable [a] A top call-center can scammers if they hit their on-target income and [b] This is how a typical call center turns out every day.
If not here’s a new video just for you! “I have 100 cockroaches here, and I put them in this James Bond-style contraption.” So you can probably imagine how things end.
While not a very-threatening result, when Rubber later released an insect inside a call center with rubber that has access to footage from its CCTV feed, the video provides a good visual indication of how hardworking and relentless these scammers are. (When their work is not driven from the pod by Roach, that is.)
Counterfeit money back scandal
The scammers in the Rubber video appear to be primarily known as “fake return” tactics, which go something like this:
- Scammers give you an impressive but believable amount of “returns”, Say $ 2000 for “over-billing” for a product or service you actually use.
- They then “help” you to login to your bank account To make sure the transaction went through.
- They secretly edit HTML in your browser So the page basically shows ten times the amount of transactions mentioned.
- They shout and shout, Claiming that they themselves must have typed an extra zero and they mistakenly returned a lot more.
- Then they broke down in tears, Or turn on emotional blackmail, claiming that they (or you!) Will be responsible for the huge difference, so please, oh! Please! You won’t help?
Their goal is to seduce, shake, whip, threaten, seduce, beg, and persuade you to return the “extra” money from your own account.
After all, you can see that there is a huge refund, not because the item on the page is counterfeit, a huge deposit, and the HTML has been changed in memory to show a huge increase in balance.
You are deceived into thinking that they have made a mistake that will inevitably get them in trouble and cause you trouble too.
The miscreants therefore hope to persuade you to help “cover” their mistake by withdrawing the “excess” from your own account and returning the “difference” to them through another channel.
While you may be convinced that a criminal will never catch you with such obvious tactics, you will probably admit that, like most things, this type of scandal only becomes clear the second time you see or hear about it.
Easy to get on the bus. Millions of people around the world do this every week. But if you have ever taken a bus to a new city or town, you will know the uncertainty you faced when traveling for the first time. Will you get off at this stop? Probably a bit closer to the next one? But what if the bus goes into a tunnel and your next stop is a few hundred meters away from your destination? How can you tell? And the simple answer is that you either have to ask someone else and believe their answer, or find out for yourself by doing a test. Your next journey, if there is one, will be easy and sure. This is your first outing you don’t know what to look for and therefore when you are more likely to be wrong.
Other common scams
Other common phone scams include:
- Email you with a “receipt” for a counterfeit transaction, For example the $ 79 Amazon charge you never made, but by offering a “helpful” telephone support number you can call to disrupt the “payment”.
- It is being claimed from the tax office To discuss the “late payment” of the tax “penalty” in your latest “assessment”.
- Pretends to be a police officer And read a list of “criminal charges” that could result in your impending arrest unless the “fine” is paid quickly.
- Pressuring you to keep money in “high return” investment schemes, Often supported by legitimate-looking but completely fake websites or mobile phone apps that mimic a healthy return.
Regular Naked Security readers know that these calls are a packet of lies, so while they are a distraction and annoying, they are not a direct threat.
But do your {children, grandparents, dear aunts, cousins, ultra-tech friends} know that they are garbage?
Probably not, if you look at the latest Interpol report Crack down on social engineering Fraud
Interpol’s definition of social engineering fraud is very much our own Scandalous [that] Tactics or fraud to give people confidential or personal information that can then be used for criminal financial gain. “
In a recent two-month global operation called First Light 2022, Interpol said:
76 countries [took] Part of an international clampdown on organized crime groups behind telecommunications and social engineering scandals. Police in participating countries raided national call centers on suspicion of telecommunications or scamming fraud, particularly telephone fraud, romance scams, e-mail fraud and associated financial crimes.
Although results are still coming, Interpol claims that the operation has so far yielded results:
- Related Expeditions were carried out in 1770 places Worldwide
- Related 3000 suspects Marked
- Related 2000 arrested Operators, fraudsters and money launderers.
- Related 4000 bank accounts Frozen
- Related $ 50,000,000 illicit funds Stuck
As an Interpol note, one of the stories behind the scandals used by these criminals is to pretend to be from Interpol.
In some cases, as we’ve written before, pretending to give an “official” legal lifeline to recover some money, these types of scams are sometimes used as a follow-up to second-degree intimidation. They lost the first part of the scandal.
Of course, the reason why the “investigators” got acquainted with the details of how the scammers worked and how much they suffered was not the result of good police work, but simply that the fake “police” were part of the same group. That led to the original scandal.
What do you do?
As Mark Rubber’s video (see above) makes clear, destroying 2,000 suspected scammers and seizing $ 50m in profits is just the beginning.
Sadly, there are many more scams from which those 2000s came, so:
- Never rush to transfer personal information. Remember these two simple jingles: Stop. Think. Connect. And: If in doubt, do not give it!
- Make sure your friends and family know where to look for real tips on how to identify scams. Don’t let scammers “learn” about scams by going around (or on websites).
- If your friends or family warn you that you may be cheating, listen to them. Don’t let scammers separate you from your loved ones as well as your money.
More anti-scam advice for friends and family
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