Virgin Media Community

[Eddie07]

Had a call today stating chap was from Virgin, said my broadband was lagging, asked me to switch on laptop. I refused and hung up. Has anyone else experienced this ? Cheers Eddie 

[goslow · Accepted solution]

Yes, a very common scam increasingly doing the rounds at the moment. You did the right thing in hanging up and not engaging with him.

[Eddie07]

Thanks for reply tried to contact Virgin but difficult at present with COVID etc ill put the word out with family/friends 

cheers Eddie

[goslow]

The aims of these scam calls are various but may include: identity theft, gaining access to your computer to steal personal information, gain access to your online banking to steal money, getting you to connect to a premium rate phone number by pressing a button to continue the call etc. etc. etc.

You may find this government link useful for advice

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/suspicious-email-actions

Unfortunately, if you have received one call, you may well receive more. If you received the call on your VM landline you could consider using some sort of call blocking/screening device or similar phone which can usually filter them out if the number of such calls becomes too great.

[Eddie07]

I had 4 today from unattainable number guess it was the same team. Thanks again for advice and link. 
best regards Eddie 

[goslow]

Sorry to hear that but once they have made 'first contact' with you, more calls will often follow.

If the calls become too much, you could look at a call blocker device which screens out the calls and prevents them ringing through to your phone.

I recently posted some extended info. on using a trueCall device here

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/How-do-I-change-my-Virgin-Media-landline-phone-numbe...

and here

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Nuisance-Calls/m-p/4324071#M136451

This has totally solved the problem for me and screened out all the unwanted calls. You could also look at

https://www.cprcallblocker.com/

which has a range of devices at cheaper price points but perhaps with not so many fine-tuning features of the trueCall device.

BT also offer a range of call blocker phones. The simplest ones offering blocking of individual numbers are not much use since the caller ID numbers are invariably spoofed and change for each and every call. Some of the BT phones offer trueCall features but there have been a few mentions on these forums about issues with them not working reliably with VM caller ID (though it is not clear if this is a VM caller ID problem or a BT phone problem).

If you look at buying a blocker device, check out the online reviews of the device before purchasing for any mentions of problems on a VM landline. Also make sure the place you buy it from has a good returns policy in case you run into any technical issues with it.