Virgin Media Community

[Glandalf]

Had a call this morning suggesting that my Internet connection was being used by someone else. The caller claimed to be from virgin media and when challenged suggested that I download team viewer from the app store and that I would be able to verify her claims using team-viewer. Obviously this was a scam, how can I report this, can I block this number, is team-viewer inherently vulnerable to scammers, my grandson has pc on this network that has been using team-viewer to enable school work during lockdown is that also vulnerable. Had software back in the 90s that would alert me to any malicious attempts at infiltration, do I need to dig it out.???????? That should be enough question marks to cover the many questions. 1471 "number withheld " but virgin should have that number. Maybe Bt should be prevented from selling UK numbers to third parties which appear to only be used by scammers. 

Any questions that can be answered would be great 

[goslow · Accepted solution]

Lots of past posts on this on 'Security Matters' and 'Home Phone' forums with various suggestions for workarounds and remedial measures.

As you have spotted it was a scam call. There is no point in reporting it to anyone (unless you have actually been a victim of crime) as it won't reduce any future scam call attempts against you.

Little point in blocking numbers either as these are either faked, or a cloned real number from an innocent party, and will change for each call so any number you block will most-likely never be used again and the number block will never be applied.

Personally I wouldn't leave any remote access software installed on my computer. If your grandson needs to receive legitimate support on a computer from a verifiable source then the standalone 'Quick Support' option for Team Viewer is better IMO. It can be run once and deleted after use. His school may, however, have its own requirements and processes in place.

Screening the scam calls is a better approach IMO. Search the VM forums for trueCall for lots of info on this call screening device or a BT phone which has trueCall features built in.

[nodrogd · Accepted solution]

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@Glandalf wrote:

Maybe Bt should be prevented from selling UK numbers to third parties which appear to only be used by scammers. 

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All UK numbers are allocated to providers by OFCOM. The scammers are not allocated any numbers. Just as you can put false or cloned plates on a vehicle, you can "spoof" telephone numbers to look like legitimate ones. There are plenty of companies that legally do this for VoIP driven call centres, but the software can be used by anyone in any country. The majority of these calls come in via the internet from outside the UK, & as our ancient telephone system does not have any 21st centuary security measures there is no way to check the Caller Line Ident code matches the original source. Hence you get calls from supposed UK numbers that actually come from scam call centres in India.

[Glandalf]

Hey nodrogd, thanks for that, was a bit of a throw away comment, but point taken. I do know people that make use of that facility legitimately, had two months of nonsense when my dad fell victim to a similar scam that emptied his bank account. (recovered) ancient telephone 👍😂

[Glandalf]

Thanks for that, will be checking the school link, the caller did ask me to use my computer and only mentioned team-viewer when I said I was using my tablet. Seemed disappointed by that but I was suspicious from the start, when I queried the request for team-viewer and pointed out that in ten years of virgin media use have I ever needed to do anything like that, they hung up.

[Zach_R · Accepted solution]

Hi @Glandalf,

Thank you for your posts and welcome to our community forums. We're here to help.

I am really sorry to hear you received this kind of call. It definitely doesn't sound like the call that we'd make, and we wouldn't make an outbound call to discuss technical issues unless it had been discussed and agreed upon in advance.
 

If you haven't done so already, I'd advise signing up to the Telephone Preference Service to help minimise any unwanted scam calls. You can also find some further information here.
 

If you receive them on your Virgin Media landline, there's more information here.

Thanks,
 

[Glandalf]

Hi Zach, Thank-you for the info, will look into that👍🙏

[Zach_R]

Hi @Glandalf,

No problem at all, glad to help.

Let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.

Thanks,