New phone scam going around. Someone calls you, and makes up some story about a bank transaction, etc. When you express doubt about the call, they encourage you to hang up and call your bank to make sure it is bona fide. You hang up, call your bank, and all seems okay. Next thing, your account is drained and you don't know how it happened.

This is what really happens...

When you hang up and call your bank, they have never actually hung up at their end, so the original scam phone call is not over. (Many people don't realise that a call is not ended if the caller does not hang up.) When they hear you try to hang up, they play a fake dial tone on the phone, and you believe that you have hung up. You then call your bank's number, but they hear the dial tones you push, and are able to identify which financial institution you tried to call. They can then pretend to answer, and when they identify themselves as being from the bank that you thought you called, they have you fooled and are able to get secret pass codes from you.

One way to protect yourself is to try and call your mobile phone first. When it does not ring, you will know something is wrong.

Clever, they almost deserve the money!

No home phone = no scam calls, no sales calls

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kiteboy dave said..
No home phone = no scam calls, no sales calls

so far.

Urban legend. When you hang up, it is over.

Sorry, needs much more clarification. Analog plain old telephone service (POTS) used to have a 90 sec timer that held the control in favour of the A party. This was related to some obscure line switching service... Current line phones will however disconnect whenever the B party hangs up.

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Harrow said..
New phone scam going around. Someone calls you, and makes up some story about a bank transaction, etc. When you express doubt about the call, they encourage you to hang up and call your bank to make sure it is bona fide. You hang up, call your bank, and all seems okay. Next thing, your account is drained and you don't know how it happened.

This is what really happens...

When you hang up and call your bank, they have never actually hung up at their end, so the original scam phone call is not over. (Many people don't realise that a call is not ended if the caller does not hang up.) When they hear you try to hang up, they play a fake dial tone on the phone, and you believe that you have hung up. You then call your bank's number, but they hear the dial tones you push, and are able to identify which financial institution you tried to call. They can then pretend to answer, and when they identify themselves as being from the bank that you thought you called, they have you fooled and are able to get secret pass codes from you.

One way to protect yourself is to try and call your mobile phone first. When it does not ring, you will know something is wrong.

Clever, they almost deserve the money!

The easiest way to tell that you are being scammed is if you get through to your bank straight away!

If you don't go through a confusing array of 'select 7 if you have green hair' prompts, and wait in queue for 20 minutes, then you aren't talking to a real bank and should hang up

It obvious really. Anyone that answers straight away is a fake.

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FormulaNova said..

Harrow said..
New phone scam going around. Someone calls you, and makes up some story about a bank transaction, etc. When you express doubt about the call, they encourage you to hang up and call your bank to make sure it is bona fide. You hang up, call your bank, and all seems okay. Next thing, your account is drained and you don't know how it happened.

This is what really happens...

When you hang up and call your bank, they have never actually hung up at their end, so the original scam phone call is not over. (Many people don't realise that a call is not ended if the caller does not hang up.) When they hear you try to hang up, they play a fake dial tone on the phone, and you believe that you have hung up. You then call your bank's number, but they hear the dial tones you push, and are able to identify which financial institution you tried to call. They can then pretend to answer, and when they identify themselves as being from the bank that you thought you called, they have you fooled and are able to get secret pass codes from you.

One way to protect yourself is to try and call your mobile phone first. When it does not ring, you will know something is wrong.

Clever, they almost deserve the money!

The easiest way to tell that you are being scammed is if you get through to your bank straight away!

If you don't go through a confusing array of 'select 7 if you have green hair' prompts, and wait in queue for 20 minutes, then you aren't talking to a real bank and should hang up

It obvious really. Anyone that answers straight away is a fake.

You normally dial up, hang on the phone for 10 minutes going through the menu, listening to a robot, make you selection and listen to elevator music for the next 10 minutes

So someone from overseas calls pretending to be in an Australian call centre, don't they know all our call centres are overseas to start with? Duh!

At least ANZ are now being honest and transparent on their call centres, my most recent contact with them over my mortgage has this signature block on his email,

Charan Kumar H ANZ SSI Pvt Ltd | Home Loans Progress Payments | Level 1, North Wing "Eucalyptus", Manyata Embassy Business Park, SEZ, Outer Ring, Nagavara and Rachenhalli Villages, Hobli, Bangalore East - 560 045, INDIA.

I am not saying Harrow is passing on false news, but...

I am skeptic about such an "alert". Here are my reasons:

(1). Have anyone tried calling up your bank for anything? How long did it take? And did you actually get through? Personally, I usually gave up and abort my call as I just couldn't stand the bloody crappy music and bank promo.

(2). How is it that by you talking to the bank, your account is hacked? Sure, you may have to give your name, your address and even Date Of Birth. But is that be sufficient for the thief to drain your money?

(3). If you are to withdraw a large sum of money, or in the scenario put up by Harrow, that your entire account is drained, you need an SMS code from the bank before your withdrawal is approved. Even after you withdrew your cash, a large sum in this case, the bank will call you up to confirm if you have indeed processed such a transaction.

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Jupiter said..
I am not saying Harrow is passing on false news, but...

I am skeptic about such an "alert". Here are my reasons:

(1). Have anyone tried calling up your bank for anything? How long did it take? And did you actually get through? Personally, I usually gave up and abort my call as I just couldn't stand the bloody crappy music and bank promo.

(2). How is it that by you talking to the bank, your account is hacked? Sure, you may have to give your name, your address and even Date Of Birth. But is that be sufficient for the thief to drain your money?

(3). If you are to withdraw a large sum of money, or in the scenario put up by Harrow, that your entire account is drained, you need an SMS code from the bank before your withdrawal is approved. Even after you withdrew your cash, a large sum in this case, the bank will call you up to confirm if you have indeed processed such a transaction.

Each bank has different online security but the scammers getting your name, address and date of birth is a good start, and by answering the questions they now know what bank you're with.

And the SMS thing isn't all banks, if you get into my online banking you can transfer to anyone up to $5000 a day (not that there's anywhere near that in my account), and my previous post tell you what bank I'm with, you just need my customer reference number and away you go :)

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Jupiter said..
(3). If you are to withdraw a large sum of money, or in the scenario put up by Harrow, that your entire account is drained, you need an SMS code from the bank before your withdrawal is approved.

An SMS code doesn't offer that much protection. It's not very difficult to transfer someone else's mobile number to a pre-paid SIM. You just buy a pre-paid SIM, and ring up the phone company and ask them to transfer your number. I did it with my own phone a few months ago, and all they asked for was my name, address and birth date. It scared me how easily it was done.

A work colleague had $200,000 taken from his bank account last month, and they transferred his mobile phone number to a pre-paid SIM card to do it.

Edit...Red thumb from a scammer unhappy I've revealed the SMS transfer secret??

I've had a message on the home phone everyday from someone saying the ATO is proceeding with a writ for my arrest for unpaid taxes and I must ring a phone number to sort it out. when I answered the phone once at the same tome of day that they normally rung they want to do a survey. I ask if they will pay me for the survey then they hang up.

I just laugh and don't answer the home phone anymore. will cancel the home phone soon as its a waste of money. The land line for home phones will be redundant soon.

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Poida said..
The land line for home phones will be redundant soon.

Agreed.. well actually I've not had one in well over 10 years, probably closer to 20. I'd say it's been redundant for a long time.

Actually in my current job reading water meters I see a surprising number of houses with no letterbox. I even had a chat with a chick, new house with no letterbox, she said 'nah just not getting one'. So there's the future. Email or no mail. Sounds scary but there's really no bill that doesn't have electronic option (normally preferred by biller) these days.

^^^ Prob has a PO Box...our mailbox kept getting smashed on Saturday nights (before pub closing curfew came in) so we got a PO Box. No more junk mail and also don't have to worry about mail getting nicked.

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(2). How is it that by you talking to the bank, your account is hacked? Sure, you may have to give your name, your address and even Date Of Birth. But is that be sufficient for the thief to drain your money?

some older PSTN exchange connections wouldn't hangup the call if the caller didn't hangup (done it many times as a joke)

I think the scam is that you never really get to hang up, and they don't hangup, and they play the classic "engaged tone then silence" at the then of the conversation to make you think that you have, then they wait for you to attempt to dial your bank, they hear the DTMF tones and know you are attempting to make a call (they assume it's a call to the bank), then they play you a dailing tone, answer and pretend to be your bank.

If they think you are not falling for it, they just hangup and move on to another call

I guess it would work for a small percentage of folk out there which is what they are betting upon

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Jupiter said..
(2). How is it that by you talking to the bank, your account is hacked? Sure, you may have to give your name, your address and even Date Of Birth. But is that be sufficient for the thief to drain your money?

That's the easy stuff, they already have all of that. They might also have your account numbers. Possible through stealing mail, or one of many other ways. (Remember, these scams often have an actual bank employee assisting them. Your bank statements get put in an envelope somewhere.) The one thing they don't have is your 'secret word'. The bank employee that is in on the scam either does not have authority to look this up, or else needs to log in with their username to look it up, which would be traceable. When you call back, they have a clever dialogue that gets you to reveal the 'secret word'. The clever ones even use a dialog very similar to the bank's, so you really think it is the bank. Last thing they do is steal your mobile phone number, after they have your 'secret word', since you will notice when your phone stops working. Might only be successful 1 in 1000, but if you bag $100,000 each time it works, it's worth the effort.

The banks lose 100's of millions of dollars a year on various scams such as these, but just write it off as a loss, as the savings they make through internet banking dwarf this.

Haircut makes a good point. If they played a fake dial tone immediately, you may not bother to hang up, and just dial.

As I said in my first response that I don't mean to doubt Harrow's story, or denigrate his good intention. However, I am still skeptical about the whole story. I believe it didn't happen to Harrow, so it would have to be a second or third party story?

There are two scenarios when I have the need to deal with my bank. Obviously, not all banks are the same in their customer interactions. Here are the 2 possible scenarios for me.

(1). I need to ring up my bank for some information about my bank balance or transactions. It would be my lucky day if I do get someone straight away to talk to me. The norm would be a long and painful wail, with tedious and sh*house music in combination of outrageous self promos. If I am persistent enough, with lot of time to waste, and if I have enough phone credit to last, then I just might get someone to talk to. On most occasions, I gave up after a long wait.

Anyway, to make short story long...If I did get to talk to the bank employee, most likely that I need my full name, address and Date Of Birth. I then explained what I want to know. If I needed to know my bank balance, the would have already got it on the computer screen as the few bits of identification I gave were sufficient for them to retrieve my bank details. Now such scenario will not cause any cash movement as I didn't request for such, and not given any permission to the bank to move my money.

(2). I do my banking online. For that, I need to enter my PIN (Personal Identification Number) as well as my password. Once in, I can move my money around. If it is just internal transfer, no big fuss as it is all happened within the bank. However, if I want to transfer money to a new receiver, mind you, "new receiver", I need to ask for a SMS password. With that password, I can validate my payment to a NEW somebody. If it is a large sum, say more than the default $5,000, you need to apply for the limit to be raised to say $10,000, or $20,000. Again, an password is needed for that change to occur.

After jumping through all those hoops, you sent your money away. The bank actually rang me to confirm if I indeed had sent money away.

With these checks, I am doubtful that money can be drained so easily. In Harrow's example, $200,000 was nicked! And it was just by talking on the phone! I wonder if the story teller, ie. Harrow mate's mate, was trying to big-note himself? I mean, anyone with $200,000 sloshing around, is one very rich amigo indeed

Hi Jup,

Four of my in-laws work in managerial positions in the big 4 Aussie banks. The stories of money stolen are beyond belief. Most involve an intimate knowledge of internal bank procedures. It's a non-stop activity happening around the clock.

Don't know if my colleagues case involved talking on the phone. I do know for certain that it involved having his mobile phone number transferred to a pre-pay sim card that allowed online password resets to occur.

Having heard all the different stories at family gatherings, I'm totally paranoid. Here's how I protect my online investment bank accounts.

1. I never use my real name in my email address.
2. My bank accounts are linked to an email address that is not mine.
3. The mobile phone number that is linked to my bank accounts is not mine.
4. When I type my passcode into online banking, I have a text file with all the keyboard characters in it, and cut and paste them from that file, so that no key logging software can capture the keystrokes. I also type in a few extra characters as I go, and then delete them at the end.

Not as inconvenient as it sounds, as it's not for my day to day accounts, just the ones that I access maybe once or twice a year.

Regards,
Harrow.

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Haircut said..
some older PSTN exchange connections wouldn't hangup the call if the caller didn't hangup (done it many times as a joke)

what i was referring to above, is even if you hung up your phone, if you picked it up again, the caller was still there (if they didn't hangup their phone). We used to do it to each other as a practical joke. It didn't happen with all calls, it seemed to be certain houses connected via certain exchanges in victoria.

I haven't had a landline in a few years. I'm not sure if this still occurs at all?

for nostalgia - does anyone remember the "pop 20c in a public phone and dial 199" prank?

stop talking rubbish mate