Further proof that phone scams are still on the rise and everyone needs to stay alert: Telstra says that complaints from its customers about lying scumbags pretending to be from the telco and trying to extort money or personal details have quadrupled in the last 12 months.
Thief picture from Shutterstock
The most prevalent version of the scam, according to Telstra, involves someone pretending to be from technical support in order to gain access to an individual’s computer. A more vicious version currently doing the rounds demands immediate payment for a non-existent overdue bill for internet service.
As ever, advise any friends and relatives who are concerned about this to ignore any calls claiming to be from Telstra or iiNet or Microsoft or Apple: just hang up. If you have time on your hands and receive a dodgy call yourself, check out our guide on how to waste the scammer’s time.
Comments
6 responses to “Telstra: Complaints About Scam Calls Are Up 400%”
I’ve been waiting for one of these calls for such a long time – finally had one on Friday last week. Managed to keep the scammer on the phone for 15 minutes before I ended up getting bored and ending the call. It was good fun for a while though, easy enough to string them along as the instructions they were giving were always just a little bit wrong.
I managed to keep mine on the line for 10 minutes while I was ‘trying to follow his instruction on a really old slow computer’ until I got bored and repeatedly asked for a tikka masala curry and 3 poppadoms.
That’s because the guys working in the Telstra call centres pass the info to the scammers. I had a client who contacted Telstra about an issue with their internet and was told Telstra will ring them once the problem has been resolved. “Telstra” rang back later and was trying to get him to install malware on his machine.
never thought of this, I wonder if you could find a pattern from the complaint calls as to who (internal staff) looked at that persons account details last. May possibly find that there is a particular call centre or even a few select individuals that are always involved.
Lead them on, blow a loud whistle in their ear or if you really want to enrage them, tell them that India is an undeveloped shit hole. I’ve gotten great reactions and threats of violence with this 😀
Except they have your name and address most of the time
BTW, the stock photo balaclava dude looks more terrified than terrifying
Maybe he just wants to eat some bakclava
Just dial random numbers. That will make them freak out. Good fun