My move to O2 - has someone at Virgin sold my details to the scammers!

[nelios16]

10+ years with Virgin Mobile, and not a single serious scam call.  I am now in the middle of my move to O2, and have already had a fairly 'knowledgeable' one, that leads me to believe they have details of my move.

I received a number of calls today (from spoofed numbers) from a lady with an Indian accent, stating that she was from O2 and was calling to offer me a 30% discount off my bill.

All I had to do was tell her the 6 digit O2 verification code that was in my recent SMS text message from O2.

I did indeed have a text message from O2 with my 6 digit code, which I had been sent last week to enable me to log in to my new O2 account for the first time - and which I had requested.

I'm guessing this individual wanted to use it to access my account to open a new contract / get a few phones under my name.

How did they know my number was moving to O2 and I was likely to have a verification code for my new O2 account?  Has this info been leaked from Virgin, or from O2?

The lady was unable to tell me my name when I asked her, which suggests they don't have all of the account info, but they seem to have the phone number(s) being migrated.  She also told me, correctly, that I have two numbers moving across.

I think this warrants further investigation, or at least flagging to customers being migrated.

(The spoofed numbers were 020 3026 4xxx and 0121 751 1xxx.  Samsung "Smart Call" flagged these incoming calls as suspected spam).

[MOD EDIT: number edited in case it's an innocent number being spoofed]

[Linhay]

Hi, this happened to me 1 week before my migration to o2 and then again 2 weeks after migration, each time I said no thanks and hung up. If you look on o2 customer forum site you will see it’s a common problem. My only advice is hang up and don’t give them any information. 

[enlli]

When O2 send the code they send a message beforehand saying don't give that code to anyone, even O2

Sadly, it seems people are ignoring that text. 

[nelios16]

By "further investigation" I meant would it be possible to trace who leaked the list of customers, an employee at Virgin or an employee at O2.  I guess so many staff would have had access to the details that it's a needle in a haystack job.

[nelios16]

Just picked this up from the O2 community forum...

"It is quite easy to get all the Virgin Numbers into a spreadsheet and call them, as the VM Migration is well publicised in the Tech Media. 

You can get the National Dial plan from OfCom, of the MISDN Prefixes owned by Virgin Media, have a spreadsheet created in an hour with every number from 000001 to 999999 and then get a dialer software and call you, saying we are from O2 and get a hit rate of 1%"

Looks like it's maybe just random targeting of Virgin customers joining O2.

***Don't give out your OTA, it's effectively the password to your account***

[griffgrog]

This is still going on.  My husband been having these calls over a month and now today I've had 2 just days after having a text saying I'm migrating to O2.  Both from 020 4502 4304 saying they are ringing frim O2 and offering a discount.