Archiv des Autors: Jessica Braasch

(English) How trustworthy are calls from „Amazon“? tellows Insights makes new study available

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Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf Amerikanisches Englisch verfügbar.

Dear tellows friends,

the tellows team is working on a new section and now regularly presents you with current statistics on calling behavior and trustworthyness for frequently reported companies.

Thousands of phone numbers are used for fraudulent purposes every day and the people called are robbed of their money. Callers often use the names of well-known brands and try to outsmart their victims.

tellows study with unique data

In a unique study we categorized Amazon related phone numbers on tellows. Data from the last 365 days from around 130 telephone numbers were evaluated.

We combine unique tellows data with expert knowledge and extensive research. On tellows, we evaluate thousands of reviews every day and create statistics and data clusters on relevant phone numbers and new scams. This allows us to focus on actual active phone numbers and quickly identify new dubious phone numbers.

Fraud calls are increasing

Fraud cases involving callers falsely posing as Amazon employees or corporate partners are on the rise. Over 50 percent of all calls reported on tellows do not come from Amazon itself. We anticipate that there will be an increased volume of fraud before Christmas.

In our study we explain to you which fraud methods are carried out by alleged Amazon employees, how you can recognize these scams and which telephone numbers are used by official Amazon employees: To the Amazon study
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(English) Anti-Robocall Technology Becomes Effective – Will Robocalls Stop Now?

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Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf Amerikanisches Englisch verfügbar.

In March 2020 the FCC approved the requirement for phone call carriers to implement the STIR/SHAKEN technology in order to stop robocalls.

The Caller ID framework includes a verification from the carrier that the caller is who he says he is. The carrier companies need to report their commitment and will receive penalties if they do not comply.

man on phone in office

What happened so far?

It is common knowledge that robocalls are illegal, but might not be obvious since they are still performed to such a heavy extend. In 1991 the Supreme Court upheld a law, but 30 years later we still struggle with those calls.

The TRACED Act passed in 2019 already lifted the fines per robocalls and introduced the STIR/SHAKEN technology to provide a reliable Caller ID for carriers. In order to reduce fraud and spam calls, the technology will display the caller ID and the person can know that it is trusted since the provider transferred the call. Fake Caller IDs can be identified.
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(English) „We call about your extended car warranty“ – Will It Ever Stop?

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Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf Amerikanisches Englisch verfügbar.

Let’s be honest, any scam call is annoying and we would gladly spend our time with more pleasant matters. But one caller type that is a never-ending story is the person calling about your car warranty. You might not even have a car, but keep getting calls about your car warranty and insurance.

car warranty contract

What do they want?

It’s a robocall classic and seems to be one of the most reported types of spam calls. Of course, you may have a car and you may have a warranty, but do you know the status? How to determine whether the call is an actual scam call or legitimate?
Calls about car warranties often come from call centers or directly as a robocall with no real person at the other end of the line. They impost your car dealer or insurance company and inform you about your expired warranty and try to sell you new ones. They don’t know your real warranty and they are not affiliated with your car dealer. The only goal is to make you feel anxious about your warranty expiration and to cover you quickly, they offer a new warranty contract with crucial conditions.
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Voting scams during the 2020 election – be aware of robocalls

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It is not a secret that phone calls are an exemplary marketing technique to earn voters. They are not just part of a presidential election, but especially in the months before the election those campaigns reach their peak. And with those, many fraudsters sniff their chance to get in contact with people and scam them on the behalf of the election. We report about the most common scams and what you can do to avoid them.

election 2020 robocall

Just in July this year we reported that the U.S. Supreme Court held up a rule for the long-awaited ban of robocalls to mobiles in context to political advertisement among others. While in 2015 it was paused for exceptions, the majority of the court voted for an ongoing ban of robocalls.

While the FCC already ruled the limitation of automated calls and texts as well as pre-recorded voice calls referring to political campaigns to mobile phones without prior consent, many US citizens still encounter robocalls without giving consent. While there are lots of genuine calls about political campaigns, scammers are always taking their chance to make money out of credulous citizens.

Different kinds of political scam calls

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(English) Stay Away from Gift Card Scam!

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Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf Amerikanisches Englisch verfügbar.

Hello everyone! Today we would like to remind you about the gift card scam. The holiday season has just passed and there are more and more reports regarding gift card scams, which raise concern. Therefore tellows would like to provides some details about it.


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(English) Cyber security, Personal information and Phone scams

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Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf Amerikanisches Englisch verfügbar.

The number of phone scams has been soaring in the recent years and scammers have been taking advantages of technology to perform endless phone frauds. As stated by the Federal Communications Commission, half of the calls made in the US in 2019 will be spam calls. Revenue lost due to phone frauds in US peaked $83M in the first quarter of 2019, more then 140K reports received in 4 months according to Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Phone scam is the most common type of frauds referring to FTC and the median of reported fraud loss is $1000.

Robocalls are the most notorious spam calls nowadays. We have little control for this particular type of phone fraud, as it is generated by computers that dial high volume of random phone numbers in a short period of time. But what about other types of spam calls, like Wangiri scam, IRS scam, telemarketing calls, sweepstakes calls……? Why do these scammers call you and where is the leak? There is always something we can do to lower the chances of receiving spam calls! Lets start with protecting our personal information on the internet!

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(English) Wangiri scam! Don’t call back

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Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf Amerikanisches Englisch verfügbar.

Dear tellows fellows,

Today we want to tell you about the Wangiri scam. This fraud displays no sign of dying and it’s widespread in many countries like Italy, Indonesia and Spain. It is related to the missed calls we receive from foreign numbers. In fact, many scammers abroad use the Wangiri method to deceive us.
What is it? Let’s have a look!

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„Was that my phone?“ Beware of less than exotic calls from the Carribean

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Most of us now are glued to our mobile phones. Kids can be playing in the other room but by golly our phones are always within arms length or even closer. Have you ever asked yourself how you ended up with missed calls on your phone? Surely, you would have it heard it ring. And then we sight this phone number we’ve never seen before. Once upon a time we would just simply hit the call back button but we live in different times now, a time where we need to move with caution and implicate security measures with almost everything we do. We have another reason why.

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Get these best insider tips from the IRS to avoid tax scams

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Tax season is here and opportunists are again determined as ever to victimize wage earners, steal their identities and much-anticipated tax refunds.

Your Social security number, name and date of birth – that’s all a scammer needs – as easy and as low risk as that. Once they have a Social Security number in hand, the scammers can file a phony tax return in the victim’s name, claim a large refund and have it sent to a false address.

Last year, the IRS caught more than 1.8 million fake tax returns and prevented more than $12 billion in fraudulent refunds. It is estimated that about $21 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the next five years can even be issued to scammers.

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The tellows app caller identification for Android and iOS – the smartphone app to identify nuisance callers!

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With the tellows app, you can now identify unknown callers!

The app will tell you real-time if the call is trustworthy or not. On the first ring of your phone, the tellows score will appear in order to help you decide whether to answer the phone or cancel it – 7 to 9 being the most untrustworthy numbers. The app also allows you to read the comments of users about this number. Post your own complaints through this app so you can also warn others. The service is free of charge.

The only requirement is of course, aside from internet access, is an Android Smartphone or an iPhone.
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