Tornado
VIP MEMBER
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2017
- Messages
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Last night on our local news was a story of a couple of victims of a new phone scam.
A call comes in claiming to be your credit card alert system stating you've got unusual charges and telling you to immediately call your card company with the number on back of your card. The caller hangs up, or so it seems. In fact they just play a dial tone sound while you then hang up. You then dial your card company number. Someone (the scammer still on the line) answers and pretends to be your card rep, getting you to provide your full card number, addy, other personal identifiers etc. Then they proceed to make huge credit limit charges etc.
This can happen b/c many land line phone providers still have an archaic "feature" that keeps line open when you hang up if caller stays on line. Concept was to permit you to hang up and move to another phone in you home and get back into same call. I know of no one that has ever needed this old feature. The news report contacted the Canadian providers about their feature policy, some were only 15 seconds, others 5+ minutes.
Be careful out there folks!
A call comes in claiming to be your credit card alert system stating you've got unusual charges and telling you to immediately call your card company with the number on back of your card. The caller hangs up, or so it seems. In fact they just play a dial tone sound while you then hang up. You then dial your card company number. Someone (the scammer still on the line) answers and pretends to be your card rep, getting you to provide your full card number, addy, other personal identifiers etc. Then they proceed to make huge credit limit charges etc.
This can happen b/c many land line phone providers still have an archaic "feature" that keeps line open when you hang up if caller stays on line. Concept was to permit you to hang up and move to another phone in you home and get back into same call. I know of no one that has ever needed this old feature. The news report contacted the Canadian providers about their feature policy, some were only 15 seconds, others 5+ minutes.
Be careful out there folks!