Another scam

I have been registered with TPS for years but now get loads of unsolicited selling calls and scams, so it seems that TPS is now a wasted effort and as has been said above, even the govt departments are selling your so called data, we just have to accept there is no such thing as privacy in respect of telephones anymore.

Dave W

Watch out!

Dont block calls that show your number or you will block yourself!

I have at present, an el cheapo 12 month contract, paying only £15.90 monthly. It tells me the number of last caller only and doesn't take messages. Displays number calling when it rings

1. Any unrecognised numbers ignored by me, which I think is the main reason for the now almost non existent dodgy calls. Family, friends and club members know I will call back if I see their number. Most of us have email or text anyway.

2. I dont waste time listening to messages.

Not quite wasted, because respectable companies mostly abide by it, and it does reduce the number of calls.

It's a weak system though. Despite observance being a legal requirement, TPS do not make it easy for consumers to complain and enforcement is down to yet another organisation who have to be persuaded, the Information Commissioners Office. In my experience the ICO is underperforming; never pro-active, working with privacy legislation full of loop-holes, and liable to react only after an egregious breach. Consequently effective action is unlikely to be taken against anyone who chooses to ignore TPS especially if they are abroad.

We get what we deserve. Do you vote for politicians because of what they promise or what they deliver? Rarely is there much relationship between promise and delivery. Quite a few big names are D-minus performers when you look closely, but talking a good show seems to get them through.

Very few engineers go into politics probably because we like solutions that work properly! Engineers would solve an unwanted call problem with aggressive technical measures; we wouldn't expect a voluntary system, blurred responsibilities and unenthusiastic enforcement to do the job!

Dave

Dave, aka SOD, I think your contribution sums up the situation as it stands, I made a complaint to TPS and shouldn’t have wasted my time, they are not helpful in the least. As for any help with legislation from Parliament again don’t hold your breath, it seems caller display is our best bet.

Dave W

Yesterday I opened my email inbox to find three messages supposedly from The National Lottery. All related to tickets that I had not bought and for draws I do not play. All were for tickets from June draws. I was expected to sign in to my lottery account direct from the email . The scammers look to be taking the remaining cash from the accounts they access but I have no idea how . All three deleted. Nathan.

Edited By Nathan Sharpe on 07/08/2019 17:10:10

Had a Gal email Me and She said She was waiting in the driveway for Me. Did not pull the curtain to check, and She would probably have to get past the Wife to get to Me. If that happened I would get some popcorn and settle in.

I have an older version of one of these on my landline - it doesn't stop everything, and is no use for mobiles, but it it does work - costs around 70 pounds, and you don't have to rely on the t*ssers at BT.

**LINK**

A N Other, seems to be a whole lot more use than TPS, if the calls really get me down I would be tempted to invest.

Dave W

Thames Valley Police have put a video on YouTube (using actors but it was an actual case) about a Courier fraud, I have put a link to it here:-

TVP Video

might save somebody getting expensively caught out.

Edited By V8Eng on 07/08/2019 23:42:14

Edited By V8Eng on 07/08/2019 23:46:37

My partner had another scam just recently which was really annoying and threw up a few disturbing revelations. She checked the details on her phone contract as the bills had suddenly started increasing for no apparent reason. It turned out she had supposedly been buying games from some company and was being billed by O2 for the privilege!

A trip to the O2 shop showed that she had indeed subscribed to these games (from “Bona Fide Mobile Lt&rdquo – the problem was she didn’t know how. Apparently it might have been as simple as clicking on a browser link which might not even have mentioned a games subscriptions at all. The woman in the shop blocked the number and we thought that would be the end of it. Last night however another text came through about another subscription from the same company. We went into the shop again today and the answer was she must have clicked on a link again to reactivate the subscription! You can imagine that after the previous experience she had been pretty careful but obviously not careful enough.

The woman in the shop told us that she had also been scammed in a similar way and her colleague went on to say that it was possible to “subscribe” simply by pressing the x in the corner of an advert to get rid of it. He said, and I don’t know if it is true, that you should wait for 30 seconds before clicking until the potentially fake x was replaced by a “real” x to remove the ad!

The woman in the shop told us to contact the Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) website **LINK** which she did and it turns out that they are just bringing in measures to prevent this sort of thing. I didn’t lose my temper in the shop but they didn’t seem to understand that the phone companies should not allow rogue operators to simply be able to set up a system which enrols you in a subscription you do not know about BUT GIVES THEM (AND PRESUMABLY THE PHONE COMPANY) a nice little earner that goes on weekly until you see something on your bill. It does not seem to be possible to simply put a block on texts that take money out of your account. It seems to me you should have to have at least a two stage process including putting in a verification code before any money could be taken out and this is indeed one of the things they are bringing in on the first of November.

It is worth looking at the PSA website and probably worth a quick check on your own bills to check that it has not happened to you. Sorry for the long post but this is something that I had no idea could happen and certainly should not be allowed to happen.

Bob

It's technology again - I don't know how but one of those bl**dy smiley things has appeared along with some random letters - it should have read Bona Fide Mobile Lt.

Bob

Edited By Bob Lamb on 08/08/2019 00:41:37

Not so much a scam but a brand new VW golf was stolen from the bust car park of the garden centre next to Wentworth woodhouse yesterday. Not out of the ordinary I hear you say, but these boys turned up with a beaver tail recovery vehicle, in full hi vis clothing and lifted it in from of hundreds of witnesses. No one said a thing to them, why would they, and away they went.

Hoping the fact it's on cctv will help but I'm not hopeful if they were that bare faced.

Obviously high value motors are on the menu.

Plasma.

Plasma, possibly it was a repo, someone forgot to make their repayments?

Dave W

Discussing something else with my Bank, yesterday, I was told that if you receive a nuisance / scam call; hang up and dial 1572. Apparently that will block that number from bothering you again.

Have yet to try it to find out if it works.

Possibly may work for "spoof" UK numbers, but maybe not for "withheld" or overseas. We shall see!

Howard

The 1572 Blacklist is part of the BT Call Protect system which you need to have. Works for most spam calls AFAIK if you so choose.

Another TVP video, actor again but based on true cases.

TVP Video 2

I threw out another "I'm from Microsoft and you computer's reported a fault" call recently. That was unexpected because I have had none of those for a long time.

'

Complaints here about the inertia and complacency of the ICO, but I've little confidence in Action Fraud, too.

You never hear back from it if you make a report, but that might be concerned with security so I can accept that.

My beef with it is that is very awkward and long-winded to use, and is clearly a database of classic form. I.e, written by someone brilliant at writing extremely complicated software while lacking the imagination or initiative to consider the user, and to realise that set menus of a few random questions immediately limits the system's scope.

You might expect it to accept forwarded e-mails for analysis... No! That's too obvious for the Access-jockeys to spot!