Hi there,
tellows would like to inform you about the latest threats of Black Friday! Christmas is coming and it is time to shop for our loved ones, however, we also have to protect ourselves from the scammers.
Below let’s have a look at the most common holiday scams: please don’t fall victim to them!
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It has been a long time! tellows hopes you enjoyed the summer. This time we would like to present the latest statistics about phone scams from the past two months. As a reminder, a bill ‘TRACED ACT’ was passed in July and it aims to lower the number of robocalls. However, according to Forbes, robocalls are still prevailing and the number of robocalls in the second quarter this year was 38% higher than last year; the number of imposter phone scams was also 28% higher.
In these days we have to pay more attention to the victims of phone frauds, which includes the vulnerable seniors. Last week an elderly robocall victim committed suicide after phone scammers have stolen her life-savings.
Screenshot from FTC report
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Robocalls have been bothering us a long time and it has recently been becoming more and more unbearable. Last year the number of robocalls reached 26 billion – a 46% increase comparing to the estimated robocalls in 2017. A bill regarding to nuisance calls is passed by the US Senate with 97 to 1 vote in the later of May. The bill, named TRACED (Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence) Act, will lift the fine to $10,000 per robocall and extend the statute of limitations on robocalls from two to three years.
According to CNN politics, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed that
“There’s very little more annoying to New Yorkers than being woken up in the dead of night by automated calls trying to scam them out of their hard-earned money,”
“The TRACED Act is just what we need to hang up on these nonstop robocalls, and the House should follow the Senate’s lead and pass it ASAP.”
Telecom companies are happy with the result. With this new regulation established, carriers will be able to implement robocall blocking technologies for customers automatically.
Screenshot from TransNexus
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If you still remember, the US government is doing something to stop the skyrocketing robocalls, there are bills in Congress waiting to be voted next month. In the US, we receive billions of robocalls per month, and monthly money loss amount to 128M last year. Of course, it is promising if the bill passes in the summer, however, we should also pay attention to the latest information about phone scam in the mean time!
Picture from FTC
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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!
According to First Orion, also sited by Federal Communications Commission report,almost half of the calls received in the US will be a spam in 2019. According to a caller ID and blocking company in the US, it stated that there were 26.3 billion robocalls made in 2018. All these figures point to a skyrocketed trends of spam calls and especially for robocalls, that bothering almost half of the residents in the US. We have all received spam calls more or less before, but what are these Robocalls and how do they get so popular?
What are Robocalls?
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!
Just imagine you receive a phone call one afternoon from THE US Federal Grants Administration and you think to yourself, what could they possibly want with me? You receive the news of a lifetime – you have been awarded a grant to initiate any project or further your education of your choosing, all at a total value of $8000.00!*
Does it sound too good to be true? The latest scam to sweep across America is the Government Grant scam and unfortunately my friends, this one hasn’t landed anyone thousands of dollars richer. What usually happens to the contrary, is that the caller claims himself to be a representative of the US Federal Grants Administration and attempts to lure the recipient to believe that they have qualified for a government grant. In order to retrieve this “free money,” the caller firstly requires the person’s bank account number or a small figured deposit.
We have some beneficial information with what you might hear, see and expect, to help easily recognize this Government Grant Scam and useful tips for proceeding with the phone call.
Football season kicked off recently and the social media has been undeniably broad. Ahh yes, the World Cup has brought more than football to the forefront than economic, politcal and of great interest – social issues. But we must tell you there is something behind the scenes lurking. Scams with ‘World Cup’ related content are said to increase right through to the end of the season.
MessageLabs Intelligence report 419 scams, including emails offering tickets to games, fake auction websites, fake accomodation providers, offers of free mobiles are all in the mix that we can expect to see to be on the rise in the next few weeks.
Image courtesy of Chrisroll FreeDigitalPhotos.net
And it comes to no surprise to us here at tellows. We have received a number of comments from people around the world stating that they have received an email claiming that they have indeed hit the al’mighty jackpot and won themselves tickets to see the game live in Brazil. It seems that this email will ask the recipient to phone back and potentially be charged premium rates or respond to their email which could in fact permit hackers access to your computer. Symantec Intelligence inform that contact such as an email is often just the beginning of an elaborate scam.
tellows commentator OwenOcrazy said on phone number 8015429344
I got something quite different. I got an email with this return SMS number attached for tickets to the World Cup Brasil. Quite different but more or less the same. Who do these fools take us for?
1. Ignore any suggestion to respond with an SMS, phone call or email. You can verify the phone number by performing a tellows search and read what our users have to say about their experience.
2. If the email itself looks a suspicious with World Cup propaganda or merchandise related offers, do not proceed to click on any attachments or images.
And thirdly,
3. our information is gathered by our users themselves. If you have come across something that seemed suspicious to you, do leave a comment. We urge members of the community to warn others of persons and their phone numbers that aim to financially and emotionally rob others.
Source: https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/fifa-world-cup-scams-continue-circulate
