- A new telephone credit card scam is underway to con you
of your credit card information. And forget about the phone company caring
about it, too.
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- You will receive a phone call from a strange, surreal
phone number such as 407 000 9821, according to your caller ID.
However, the name part of your caller ID display will probably be blank.
A recorded female voice tells you that because of your prompt payment history,
you're eligible to lower your credit card interest rate. If you're interested
please press 1 (message, gender and number to press will probably vary.)
Out of curiosity to see what this scam was about, I pressed the number.
At that point, no information was provided to the caller so no real harm
could take place.
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- A few months ago, I re-entered our phone number on the
national "Do not call list" for telemarketers. But as you probably
already know, telemarketers are now ignoring that list. This list has gone
the same way as licensing citizens band users.
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- A number of other telephone operators in the room can
be heard talking to other people in the background. This is strongly suggestive
of a "boiler room" type operation. A man answers who is apparently
reading from a script. Then the question was asked, "What would you
say your current card balance is?"
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- I responded with "If you are calling me, then you
should already have that information." The next thing I
heard was his handset slamming down which disconnected the call.
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- There is no seven digit phone number that begins with
000. The number group from 000 to 199 is reserved for phone company
internal lines.
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- A reverse phone number check with whitepages.com resulted
in confirming this fact by giving the following message from
their website:
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- No listing was found for the phone number you entered.
- A valid 7-digit phone number is required for this search.
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- This provides more proof that the 000 is clearly a fraud.
Somehow, these scammers have defeated the caller ID system which is *supposed*
to originate from phone company switching system computers. Perhaps they
have tapped into a trunk line somewhere.
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- When I reported this to the phone company Frontier Communication's
fraud division , I was told they cannot trace the call. I then said,
"Look, I know about the data collection system you already have in
place for NSA. Of course it doesn't officially exist, but don't you
have access to the data you collect for them?"
- The response to that statement was a terse answer, interrupting
me while I was speaking claiming there's nothing they can do.
The man also falsely claimed that if the number on my telephone display
is wrong they cannot trace it either. He continued to argue with me until
I told him that his group was useless and I ended the call.
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- This is utter nonsense. There is an automatic record
made in computers of every call that goes through every telephone company,
including the caller's origin and phone number. It is this information
they actually have, but claim they do not.
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- So beware- there are new fraudsters on the block, and
there doesn't appear to be anyone that will do anything about them. Once
they have your personal information the identity theft will be complete.
And you won't know they hit you until you receive a card statement in the
mail next month, or even worse, when your card is declined at a store,
gas station or restaurant putting you into highly embarrasing
position with insufficient cash in your pocket to pay the bill. There are
countless stories of individuals who have spent a year or more and thousands
of dollars just to re-gain their identity after identity theft.
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- We know that Frontier is at least one of the phone companies
which is clearly unmotivated to protect it's customers, and will
not pursue this type of fraud.
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- Ted Twietmeyer
- tedtw@frontiernet.net
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