Virgin Media Community

[tjpoppleton]

Is anyone getting a large number of 'cold calls' propertied to be from Virgin Media Technical Support?  Currently I am receiving 10+ such calls, each and every day at present.  I say they are cold calls as I have never been able to obtain valid confirmation that they work for Virgin Media.  For example when  I asked for then to confirm my account details I was given a 20+ character alphanumeric code.  Others just ignore the question and continue reading their script.  The script relates to validation they I have an active Virgin Media router, which is supposedly running slow due  to receiving a large number of unwanted files.  Though my internet performance tests do not show this.

These calls proport to come from various UK locations, e.g. 0122246..., 028375..., 0185652...(most common number due to receiving 5+ calls within 1 hour).

Does Virgin Media technical Support make such cold calls?  How are Virgin Media Support staff supposed to identify themselves in cases where they call clients back directly?

Regards,

TJP
 

[Andrew-G]

No, this is a scam. VM don't make outbound calls like this.

The routine is to frighten people into believing they are at risk of losing service, talk them into first of all bring up a Windows event viewer programme that inevitably generates a string of serious sounding (but in reality innocuous) error messages, and then talking the victim into granting access to their devices and or account, and then stealing user credentials for a range of purposes, from sending spam to emptying your bank account.  Despite being illegal, the UK and Indian authorities, and the respective telecoms providers (including VM) are utterly USELESS at blocking these scams.

[jamesofmerton]

'the respective telecoms providers (including VM) are utterly USELESS at blocking these scams'

useless = unable

no provider can prevent (all) scam calls. unless of course every single call was manually screened/investigated at length first before it was allowed to go through to any customer.

i've been an anti scammer over 20 years. we try to stop them at source but is a never ending battle. sometimes they are individuals sitting on a box outside their house in abuja. other times they are full blown call centres in bangkok with a hundred of them calling lists of numbers all day long. sometimes spoofed, sometimes number withheld, sometimes their actual number.

unfortunately, as long as these individuals are continuing to phone, others are falling for it and they are in the hundreds of thousands each month across the globe.

all people can do is be aware. even those that are told they are being scammed refuse to accept it on many occasions. the amount of times i have heard 'they seemed so nice'. one person accused me of causing the scam to happen, ie had i not told the person it was an attempted scam, the scammer wouldn't have then scammed them!