Indian phone scammers

[nali]

Including the ones that pretend to be from your bank and ask you call them back.
What you don't know is when they keep the line open and put a fake dial tone in it.

My bank cold calls me - then asks me to confirm my identity by answering a couple of security questions!
It's normally a very short call...

A bit ironic, as they're running a national advertising campaign based on security

[texaspyro]

Including the ones that pretend to be from your bank and ask you call them back.
What you don't know is when they keep the line open and put a fake dial tone in it.

My bank cold calls me - then asks me to confirm my identity by answering a couple of security questions!
It's normally a very short call...

A bit ironic, as they're running a national advertising campaign based on security

You have probably been scammed.   That's a very common trick these days, and they are VERY good at making the calls look / sound legit.   NEVER EVER give any personal / security info to ANYBODY that calls you.  Always call back the bank first to verify they made the call.  NEVER call back using phone numbers / caller ID that the caller provides.

[nali]

No it's definitely the bank. They ask for me by full name and the phone's smart number lookup that someone mentioned earlier up the thread confirms it.

The standard response I give is "You cold called me and want my security answers? No." The last one offered to send a secure message so I could log on to my account and check. For a marketing call. I don't think so...

[boB]

Not responding to unknown numbers has its own penalties.  In the last month numbers that I didn't recognize turned out to be an A/C service technician calling to clarify directions to my house, my son calling for assistance using a friend's phone, a doctor calling with medical information for my wife and a reminder call of a dental appointment that I had forgotten.  You might have fewer of these but it is hard for me to accept that you know the phone numbers of everyone you want to hear from.

Yes, those calls you just have to take on an individual basis.

I only have a cell phone now.  I can't believe all the unwanted calls I have been getting lately !  I don't even bother adding them to my blocking list anymore.

Sometimes I will get a call from the doctor's office and it is either already in my contacts OR it is  "unknown" or something like that.  ALL the spammers as of lately seem to come from a number out of area which I don't answer or spoofed to be something that looks like it is from my area.  I just have to let it go to voice mail.  If it's important they will hopefully leave a message.  Otherwise, if it's a number I don't know and I am expecting a call, then I will usually answer it.

So far this works well for me.

I also recently got a voice mail from someone in my cell phone prefix telling me to "STOP CALLING ME !". He obviously did not know about the call spoofing method and evidently the spammers had used MY cell number spoofed to call him.  I called the guy back, introduced myself and told him how the spoofing worked.

A lot of people don't understand I guess

[texaspyro]

No it's definitely the bank. They ask for me by full name and the phone's smart number lookup that someone mentioned earlier up the thread confirms it.

That just means that they have access to some copy of a database with your name/number in it and a caller ID spoofer.
 
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/10/voice-phishing-scams-are-getting-more-clever/

[CatalinaWOW]

I have recently received a couple of phone calls of the sort that are looking for a recorded "Yes" answer for their nefarious purposes.  A call comes in and asks for me by name  "Is this Joe Blow?".  Since this scam came out I always answer such questions with "You are talking to him" or "That is I" or some variant.  On at least two occasions that has resulted in an immediate hang up.
"

[SiliconWizard]

Most of those phone marketing services use fully automated servers to handle huge numbers of phone calls without "wasting" human resource. If the machine gets sufficient cues that they got someone that is likely to be the person targeted and likely to answer the call, they will pass it to some human usually working in very low-paying countries.

All this annoying spam may seem not only annoying, but also irrelevant in our Internet world. After all, it's much easier to just mass-mail, use various means of online advertisement, etc.
But they still use phone calls, because through a well known and pretty basic psychological effect, it's a whole lot easier to trap someone while directly talking to them than if they receive advertisement that they can read whenever they see fit or not read at all without having to justify themselves to anyone...

This "conversational" effect is so powerful, I'm thinking that as more and more jobs can be and will be automated, the jobs most likely to remain for humans are sales jobs.

[Housedad]

I reduced the idiots that called my house by half.

I answer the phone, and as soon as I identify them as spammers, I start doing naughty dirty sounds on the phone, telling them what and how I like it. 

They usually last to about the third or fourth moan and grunt before they hang up cussing.

Some people just can't take a joke, it seems.

[Raj]

I reduced the idiots that called my house by half.

I answer the phone, and as soon as I identify them as spammers, I start doing naughty dirty sounds on the phone, telling them what and how I like it. 

They usually last to about the third or fourth moan and grunt before they hang up cussing.

Some people just can't take a joke, it seems.

Oh boy...Cause you've brought an Indian taboo subject, let me tell you, the people of India have to discover all about s#x ed either on their own (via older friends or internet),or via pundits(religious guides) at the age of 26.

[CCitizenTO]

There is no safe response to scam calls.  Some of them are mapping when the phone is being picked up to identify unoccupied houses for burglary.  So do whatever entertains you. 

In the meantime we need to get our lawmakers to do things that raise the cost of these calls so that this massive spamming is not economical.  The costs are so low now that almost any nefarious activity is worth doing.  One idea would be a tax on carriers for each call.  The carriers can't duck out into another country as most of the spam callers do.  A small per call tax wouldn't be a significant harm to most normal people and businesses, and it would be easy to set up a deduction for businesses that proved they had a legitimate reason for a large call volume.

Other ideas welcome.

So many homes don't even have land lines anymore so ringing the phone to identify when houses are unoccupied doesn't really work these days. Most of the phones being spammed these days are cell phones.

[MrMobodies]

Yes like the third party charges.

I was buying prepaid sims over a couple of years. I don't use it for others to contact me and every time I get spam messages I wait for it to run out and get another.

Good news from a couple of months ago EE has brought out call barring against third party charges as it has gotten so bad.
I phoned them up and put on a bar and so far so good with the number I have now.

I was put off before.

I brought a Vodafone sim in 2011 for a Blackberry that was given to me.
Broadband wouldn't work on it and I did what the help desk told me to but I found out later on that it was a problem on their end.

I reset it to factory settings when I got it and never got any spam messages.
I didn't install any addons. I used it for a year to make calls and I switched it off most of the time.
A year later I put in £20 and £12 mysteriously disappeared.

I phoned up Vodafone and got through to an Indian man.
He said that it is correct it is showing third party charges to a service that I subscribed to, I should already know I signed up for it and it had nothing to do with them. I said I get no spam messages otherwise I would have replaced the sim than put another £20 on it after and the broadband doesn't work and I don't give out this number. It was for emergencies. You allowed them to bill me through you without my permission and I am telling you that now, how is that legal?
"Sir, nothing to do with us."
"So you allowed them to bill me, I am telling you I got no text message, I did not authorise this charge, and how is that nothing to do with you now?"

I asked for the third party's details and the man said they can not hand such details out and that data protection limits them.
He said "Just read the text message you got from them and reply there to unsubscribe and make complaint."

So furious I raised my voice and said:
"Look! Listen! I did not receive any text message be subscribed! I use the built in tools for find the remaining balance and they are only text messages I get. How am I suppose to MAKE A COMPLAINT let alone CANCEL if I don't have the message that you allegedly said I subscribed to?" Show me a text message that confirms that I did sign up for it?"

"Sorry, I can't do that sir."

Can I speak to a manager please?
"There is nothing you can do"
Why?
"Sir I am telling you that they is nothing you can do have a good day"

Me: "We'll you are just useless you THIEVING    ...."
Indian: "Hey hey..."

I hanged up and I crushed the sim out of rage.
I shouldn't have done that.

Small claims court is where I should have gone.
£12 isn't much but it is the principle and that phone was mostly switched off for emergencies.

[cdev]

Some members of the upper classes in India have such a ferocious sense of entitlement, its scary.

But most Indians are not like that. They are generally good people.

[Raj]

Funny, that i've met a guy who went on to become a scammer. He was a typical lower-middle class punjabi village dweller who really kept struggling to make a few bucks, repairing computers. Never met him again, but I do know that he was arrested a while ago, for scamming multiple people.
I also know that he had to  give his 10th std. exam twice, to pass and no school/college would accept him.

[cdev]

What I was trying to say is that most Indians don't deserve a bad rap.

A moral deficit among the elite isn't unique to India, although it seems as if its a particularly extreme problem there (and here in the US). Many other countries too.

Unfortunately, its actually common throughout the world.  << See this paper at PNAS and some of its authors' other works.

Are we going in the right direction to be trying to encourage people to emulate a group of people who every indication tells us people would be better off (i.e. happier, saner, smarter) not becoming?

Let me just reiterate here that most Indians that I have met (here in the US, most of whom are Americans now) are really nice people. The phone scammers people in this thread are assuming are from India may not even be Indian also.

[Raj]

Cause and effect...
I'd say, they are in the high class cause they were ready to do anything and take risks to get there. The data you're showing, i'd interpret it differently. Honest workers are never richer than the one controlling them, the one who pays them. You need to be a special kind of unethical, barbaric individual to order people around to go dig a mine or use carcinogenics to make something, while being fully aware of it.

The only reason, criminals aren't rich, cause they can't ride along the territory of illegality.

[grumpydoc]

I have recently received a couple of phone calls of the sort that are looking for a recorded "Yes" answer for their nefarious purposes.  A call comes in and asks for me by name  "Is this Joe Blow?".  Since this scam came out I always answer such questions with "You are talking to him" or "That is I" or some variant.  On at least two occasions that has resulted in an immediate hang up.

In this way you are at least confirming your identity. I don't even give that much out - my stock response being "why do you want to know", or "who wants to know".

[bd139]

My stock response is usually "fuck off" even if it is the bank.

[grumpydoc]

My stock response is usually "fuck off" even if it is the bank.

[grumpydoc]

Three often phone the mobile to offer me services that I neither need or want.

The last one started promisingly "we'd like to offer you more data on your current contract"

OK I said until it transpired that all they wanted to do was switch me to a new, more expensive, tariff which happened to have more data. The only way it was "on my current contract" was that they were offering to do this without altering my notice period. The poor woman on the end of the phone really did not understand the distinction.

In her case I am prepared to be slightly lenient as English was manifestly not her first language (and I know from my feeble efforts in French how difficult it can be for even accomplished speakers of a 2nd language to "get" nuance) but she was selling this stuff so should really understand it a bit.

But, generally, why the heck do people not understand the difference between "contract" and "notice period" - this crops all the time in phone and broadband service provision and it really annoys me.

[bd139]

Yeah BT just did that one to my mother. Get free super fast broadband without changing contract.

£7 more expensive a month 

I got that sorted. But it took 3 hours of arguing with third line dumbasses first. She now has it for £7 less a month and unlimited calls.

[Rerouter]

We get them in waves on my landline, and they all started about 3 weeks after my mother donated to a phone charity using it....

at this point I can only assume they double dip and as well as getting your money they also sell your profile to third parties.

The "Microsoft" and "Tech Support" ones where common, but we have started to get some "Tax office" ones and a stupid amount of survey calls as well.

[Richard Crowley]

I would like to find something to add to my office "Skype for Business" (and my cell phone) that would send the SIT (Special Information Tone) for disconnected numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_information_tone

[MrMobodies]

We get them in waves on my landline, and they all started about 3 weeks after my mother donated to a phone charity using it....

at this point I can only assume they double dip and as well as getting your money they also sell your profile to third parties.

The "Microsoft" and "Tech Support" ones where common, but we have started to get some "Tax office" ones and a stupid amount of survey calls as well.

I use to get them as well.

I had a similar call with them pretending to be from a government organisation then shortly after they say they are not and start asking to do surveys.

[jmelson]

I would like to find something to add to my office "Skype for Business" (and my cell phone) that would send the SIT (Special Information Tone) for disconnected numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_information_tone

All you seem to need is a "click", at least in the US.  I put in an Asterisk phone system (open source software, runs on a PC and connects to POTS copper lines with an FO interface card).  One of the features of this is it listens between ring periods for Caller ID, then ANSWERS the line (which causes a click) and then produces synthetic ring tone while waiting for one of us to pick up the line.

When the boiler rooms call, their automated dialer logic hears the click and begins hanging up.  If I answer the call, I usually hear them actually drop the call a second later.  Well, slightly annoying to answer all these hang-ups, but at least I don't actually have to TALK to the morons.

Jon

[darrellg]

https://nomorobo.com/ kills about 75-80% of incoming unwanted calls on my landline. It's very effective. AT&T Call Protect does the same for my cell phone.