Scam Phonecall?

[CJH77]

I'm a VM broadband and telephone customer. I received two phonecalls this morning purporting to be from Virgin Media.

The caller was the same both times and was offering to guide me through a process to improve my broadband speed and reliability. The caller appeared to have an accent from the Indian subcontinent and was calling from what sounded like a busy call centre. Part way through, the first call cut off but the caller was persistent enough to call back (a different number showed up on my phone's screen).

I played along for a while. When I said my computer ran an Apple operating system she passed me onto a colleague who asked me to open "Terminal" on my laptop and start typing codes into that app. At that point I told them I thought it was a scam and hung up. No call back that time.

I've since spent nearly an hour on hold to VM trying to report the issue. There is no clear place on the website to report such scams. Frankly, VM don't appear remotely concerned to know when their name is being used in attempts to scam their own customers.

Posting so that others might approach any calls they receive with caution.

CH

[nodrogd · Accepted solution]

There is little point in reporting these. We are ALL getting these calls. These are scammers in India, & yes, as reported in a recent TV documentary they set up call centres in spare office space.

Ignore the numbers. They are spoofed. The callers are using VoIP software that can fake any number. They can even call you from your own number!

How do they know you are a VM customer? They don’t. They are just guessing. OFCOM lists all the providers number allocations on every exchange in the country, & these are readily available on the internet. So unless you have ported your number they can be pretty sure if they ring a VM allocated number they will get a VM customer. They also use auto-diallers that systematically go through blocks of numbers on an exchange until all of them have been called.

No provider will ask you to download software or otherwise mess with your security setup from an unsolicited call. If you are asked anything like this just hang up. If you keep hanging up on them, or do something obnoxious like blow a whistle down the phone they soon give up.

[goslow · Accepted solution]

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@CJH77 wrote:

<snip>

I've since spent nearly an hour on hold to VM trying to report the issue. There is no clear place on the website to report such scams. Frankly, VM don't appear remotely concerned to know when their name is being used in attempts to scam their own customers.

<snip>

CH

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You can report phishing calls via Action Fraud

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/fraudulent-calls

if you are minded to do so but, as has already been suggested, there is probably not too much point in doing so.

There are very regular reports of this kind of scam on the forums. Fortunately you recognised it for what it was and were not drawn in by it.

[Marie8]

My mother has recieved at least 3 calls a day for the past fortnight of exactly the same.  Very aggressive today.  She hung up on them twice today and both times they've rang her straight back asking why she'd ended the call.  For a pensioner on her own they are disturbing calls and I find it rather surprising Virgin aren't doing anything. 

I've reported every single one to the ICO and OFCom, working in data protection and GDPR comes in handy as I know what Virgin should be doing and they blatantly aren't doing anything. 

[goslow]

I'd politely suggest that reporting them to ICO/OFCOM is probably not that productive really in terms of a beneficial outcome for your mother.

Unfortunately, the frequency of these calls seems to have stepped up a gear as soon as the current lockdown started.

There has been a parallel discussion going on today in the 'Home Phone' forum (below) which covers pretty much all of the issues and options around the problem, which might be of some interest.

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Loads-of-spam-scam-calls-yesterday-and-3-so-far-this...

Sadly, the VM defences against these calls are fairly minimal so customers have, themselves, to take up whatever self-defence measures they feel are appropriate to deal with the problem.

[Lisa_CC]

Hello CJH77 and Marie8,

I'm sorry you're both receiving scam calls pretending to be Virgin Media. I can confirm that they are not official Virgin Media calls and we would only contact our customers in specific scenarios where you're waiting on a call back for example. In addition to @goslow's post containing that link, please also see this link for more details about such calls and I'm sorry for any frustration caused by them.

Thanks,

Lisa

[MrHalfAsleep]

Since the scammers are outside the UK and EU, GDPR doesn't really mean much. Your personal data can be obtained from an old phone book or have been floating around in Scamland pre GDPR. Local area codes for the UK are freely available on the internet and thousands of random numbers can easily generated by computers.

Meanwhile, back in 1983... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb1r_uKOew4 

[nick-bayes]

I "explained" to the caller thus: "this is a tracked military security number and you should not be calling it! Response was "Sorry I will not call this number again" !!

[Davebreckie]

I recieved 2 such calls today the first saying my broadband speed was slow and sometimes fast, then I hung up, the second time half way through him telling me the same thing I asked who was the caller he was calling, he said the name he had on the account, which was nothing like our name so I just hung up.

Again this was an indian accent. the same man both times.

[Paul_DN]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for coming back to us, there are so many scam calls these days regardless to the company you are with they will call, you  can find more information around scam/ phishing calls and emails  here?

Regards

Paul.