Archive for July 4, 2015

Phone Scammers and Internet Security

With scamming on the rise, people being fleeced of their savings and the phone calls from ‘Telstra’ and ‘Microsoft’ more numerous than ever, I thought it was time for myself to spread the gospel of how to deal with all of this… It’s not iron clad, but there are some very simple common sense rules to follow and you won’t have to worry if you’ve shared your personal details with the wrong person.

I’ve recently seen a lot of bullshit safety information being shared around on social media, this is not bullshit, please please if you find any of this useful to you, please share it.

  • Telstra, Microsoft, et al. NEVER call you… Never…. Even they do, it’s often a call that’s unsolicited to begin with, as soon as they mention who they are calling from, hang up, hang up immediately. If it’s important they will call back, maybe not immediately but they will try again if legitimate. Scammers don’t call back, they call the next number in their list looking for the next victim. They only may call back at a later date if they were able to engage you in some way, hanging up immediately puts you in the bottom of their list.
  • If you think the call may have had some legitimacy, call the company in question and enquire about the call you just received. If a staff member from their organisation did phone you, there will be a record of it under your account. Big corporations keep records of their contact and attempts to contact you in their systems. If someone called you in an official capacity, it will be recorded.
  • The same principle can be applied to emails you receive, from any corporation, banks, post office, Telstra or Microsoft. Pick up the phone and verify it with whomever supposedly sent you this message. If the company has no record of the communication, then you know it’s suspect and can be ignored.

Your greatest power in the battle against scammers is the ability to verify. If it sounds remotely suspect, stop, hang up the phone if it’s a phone call, and call the company in question. Even if it ends up being a totally legitimate call, you’ve been able to verify.

I cannot stress this enough, companies will rarely make contact with you via phone, so be skeptical, hang up and call the company in question. More often than not it’s a toll free number and will only take 5 minutes of your time… How much can that 5 minutes of your time be worth to you…? Verify everything.