Scam phonecall
Feb. 18th, 2022 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dormouse1953I received a phonecall during the week claiming to be from the HSBC fraud detection people telling me that there was some unusual use of my HSBC debit card online. (One of the charges was for car insurance, which certainly wouldn't have been me.)
They asked me to phone the enquiry number on the back of the card and report this, so the card could be stopped. Now, I remember someone telling me that one trick scammers use is to not hang up when you do, which keeps the line open so you phone another number but are still talking to the scammers, who pretend to be the bank. So I told them that I'd phone that number on my mobile.
As it happened, I got confused with my mobile and couldn't work out to enter all the numbers you are required to do to get through to telephone banking. So I dialled the speaking clock on my landline, hoping that would clear the line. When I did get through to the bank they bank confirmed that there had not been any unusual transactions, so a scam. Presumably if I'd phoned back immediately, they'd have asked me for sensitive pieces of information to empty my account.
But it occurs to me that scammers may get wise to people phoning the speaking clock to clear a line they'll start imitating it.
(And checking online banking today, there had not been any transactions I wasn't aware of.)
They asked me to phone the enquiry number on the back of the card and report this, so the card could be stopped. Now, I remember someone telling me that one trick scammers use is to not hang up when you do, which keeps the line open so you phone another number but are still talking to the scammers, who pretend to be the bank. So I told them that I'd phone that number on my mobile.
As it happened, I got confused with my mobile and couldn't work out to enter all the numbers you are required to do to get through to telephone banking. So I dialled the speaking clock on my landline, hoping that would clear the line. When I did get through to the bank they bank confirmed that there had not been any unusual transactions, so a scam. Presumably if I'd phoned back immediately, they'd have asked me for sensitive pieces of information to empty my account.
But it occurs to me that scammers may get wise to people phoning the speaking clock to clear a line they'll start imitating it.
(And checking online banking today, there had not been any transactions I wasn't aware of.)
