It’s a good thing my dedicated apple care rep John called me yesterday to let me buy the premium apple security plan for only $299 using my iTunes gift card and some Bitcoin!
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FTC Warns of Recent Surge in Robocall Scammers Pretending to Be Apple
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My parents were getting the spam calls a few months ago pretending to be Apple about a breach to their iCloud account. Calls were coming in about every 20 minutes all day on their home line but finally stopped after about 2 weeks. It's rough since they are elderly and don't understand why their phone keeps ringing from these scammers. Verizon owns the land lines in the area and didn't offer any way to help them.
I got a call from someone who said they were from Microsoft and that my computer had a problem they needed to look at. When I told them I don't have a "Microsoft" computer, I have an Apple computer, he said, "Oh, let me connect you to the Apple department" lolololol
Yes! It’s called spoofing where they spoof a number that is similar enough to yours that it looks familiar so you answer
True unless you work for a large company where you get calls from people you don't know on a regular basis. Admittedly my situation is somewhat unique but I probably get legitimate calls from people I don't know 2-3 times a week.
I have gotten calls from "Amazon" asking me about a "fraudulent" order. The party on the other end says I ordered an iphone x and then wants to know my bank account/credit card. I ask them if you know I ordered an iphone x, you already have access to my account and don't need any further information from me.
With robocalls, when I answer, I figured out the first statement out is: "are you human"? Usually a hang-up at that point.
With robocalls, when I answer, I figured out the first statement out is: "are you human"? Usually a hang-up at that point.
Force the carriers to make the acceptance of VoIP calls an opt-in choice. Better yet ban VoIP calls since no legitimate business should be using that anyway.
Home Ooma account, 22 calls in one day, several with VM about my Apple account....had to turn phone off. I block the sender on Ooma web page, but it doesn't help. Here's the kicker...incoming spoofed caller ID was my name and telephone number.
Eliminate VoIP and you eliminate almost all of these criminal calls.
Oh, same in the U.S., but people haaaaaaaaaaaate calling customer service here. It’s a whole culture. I’m included in that group, but a lot of people go online to avoid it and don’t know what the address bar is/what a URL even is conceptually/how to detect basic signs of spoofing.
We are finally at the point where some schools are teaching Internet/media literacy though! (A paltry amount of schools albeit, but I was lucky enough to go to one of them.)
I've had two if those on my landline (see my previous posts on this thread). I played along to waste their time and didn't say I had a Mac.
When they asked me to "open my computer" I told them to hold the line while I looked for a screwdriver.
I managed to waste more than 30 minutes of their time and when he eventually realised that I was playing him along he said he would "f**k you, f**k your wife, I will f**k your daughter, and I will f**k your mother!"
I asked him if f**king all these people would solve the overheating problem with my PC and he hung up.
🤣
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it’s great but extremely annoying when you schedule a call with apple support and forget to turn this feature off temporarily
I have been using the Nomorobo service with my home phone and it cuts way down on the number of spammy robo calls. The landline service is free. They also have an app to use their service with your iPhone, but it is a subscription, so I have not tried it.
I get that a lot. I use an app called Number Shield (there are a lot of others that do the same thing) to wild card block all calls to my mobile area code and prefix. So the block entry is (213)-408-#### and it blocks all those.
I tried that "I have a very particular set of skills..." line about finding them and this is what I heard.
Actually the US tries:
FCC Proposes Record $225 Million Fine for 1 Billion Spoofed Robocalls
FCC Fines Telemarketer Nearly $10 Million for Spoofed Robocalls
The reality is no agency can go after every violator and so it is far easier to be informed and prevent this than to clean things up after the fact. It is the old ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I think a lot of the problem now is many of these calls come from spoofed numbers (like you mentioned) and for now there is no good way to stop that. The upcoming STIR/SHAKEN authentication should help a great deal with that. I believe I read all the US carriers are required to have STIR/SHAKEN up and running by June 2021... so we will see.
Except a lot of legitiment services use VoIP. That is what caused the New Mexico state regulators to step in regarding the whole Skywi vs Qwest debacle back in late 2008-early 2009:
"The cutoff created a crisis situation in some New Mexico communities because public safety — including fire, police and medical services — were affected."
There are just some locations where traditional phone lines are insanely expensive to put in and the only way people and services there can ruction is via VoIP.
Perhaps the real nerds among us can call it 'the James Bond Law" (ie SHAKEN not STIRred)
I don't know if it was VoIP but I have received a legitimate call back from Apple Tech Support responding to a query I'd made online.
The first time I saw it originated in Ireland so didn't reply. Then I realised it was most likely Apple calling and accepted the second call.
After speaking in Spanish for a while, and resolving the issue, I commented to the lady that seeing she was in Ireland no doubt she spoke good English. She laughed and said that actually she was in Costa Rica. 🤔
There are legitimate uses for VoIP; however, there needs to be vetting process that VoIP providers have to adopt before accepting incoming customers. When signing up for a landline or cell services, you do have to provide Photo ID, SSN and/or some identifying information if you are an individual or Tax ID and some paperwork if you are a business. The same should be done for VoIP accounts. And they should not be accepting foreign customers, period. Last, but not least, CID spoofing should not be allowed.
Sad but true. Although I believe that earlier this year FCC did sue a few US-based VoIP providers for routing illegal scam robocalls and also allowed other carriers to terminate peering agreements with them if they did not terminate these "customers" accounts. So basically, FCC told them to get rid of robocallers or they will be blocked from routing calls from all their customers (legitimate or not) to other carriers, causing them to lose their entire customer bases as their service would essentially become useless. This kind of made these robocalls slow down for a while, but now they are starting to pick up again. Today I have received around 5 of them after last few weeks being relatively silent.
Somebody is desperate to scam someone by any means necessary.
I would have told them that I am using a Linux computer to launch Nucular O'Bombas at their third-world sh*thole country.
I have iCloud account, but I very rarely use it, but most of these show up on my Outlook.com (former Hotmail) account. Yeah, I know, Microsoft's spam filters suck. I also have a Gmail account and so far every single one of these phishing attempts have been forwarded straight to Junk folder.