It it just me or is this on the rise? Recently I have noticed an increase in the number of scam phone calls that I have been receiving on my land line and on mobile. All from different countries and trying various scams to get information, money or both.

ts nothing new, calls like this go on all the time and unfortunately people do get scammed as they fall for what is being said on the other end of the line.

The game is how long you can keep them on the phone so they can’t spend time trying to scam someone who doesn’t know they are being scammed.

Recently an automated call with a computer voice called my home number saying that my internet router was going to be shutdown from my service provider as it had been identified as being hacked. Yeah – Right! So I played along and decided to record the call, which I will probably use in a future podcast. I got put onto a woman in India who evidently didn’t know what type of scam front end had put me through. She then went on to tell me my computer had a virus. Eventually I did ask “How many people had she scammed today”. The reply was lots and she put the phone down. – Time on call 30 Mins

Another call today was one of those, insurance accident ones, but this time they tried a different tack. Saying it was a follow up call to my wife about the accident she had. Again scam and I asked the lady who called if she had job satisfaction scamming people. This call came from London so I have reported it to the action fraud centre. – Time on call 5 Mins.

And as I am writing this post another call comes in – Can you spare me 20 seconds to answer 2 questions, then starts to ask me to confirm my phone number and tries to ask me about my home ownership. When I ask whats the end part of the the call, are they trying to sell me something or scam information out of me they hang up. Another call from London so again have reported it to the action fraud centre. – Time on call 5 Mins.

At least that’s 40 mins that other people haven’t been bothered or scammed by these callers.

A lot more can be done though and needs the teleco’s and authorities to go after the numbers where these calls come from and start prosecuting or at least shutting them down. That said the police get these calls as well – here is a great video on youtube of an IRS scammer trying to scam a police officer and he gets the scammer to explain how that particular scam works.

Lots of people already add numbers to online systems such as Who Called Me, and these are normally the first place I go when number comes up I don’t recognise. You can also put the number in the search engine which bring up sites where its been logged as a problem/scam caller.

If you don’t know how to protect yourself on the phone, one of the best place to get tips is from your or other banks websites. Plenty of good information on keeping safe on there.

Just because you call saying your from my bank doesn’t mean I’m going to answer your security questions.

Its always great when you get a phone call saying “Hello, I’m calling from Microsoft and we have noticed a problem with your computer”. My inner kid springs to life and its time to string on the scammers.

Unfortunately my fun was cut a bit short after the first couple of questions when I was asked what key was next to my Ctrl key on the keyboard. They are evidently looking for a Windows key and they hung up when I gave them the keys of an Apple Mac Keyboard.

The worrying part is that this practice is still going on and people fall for it giving out information and going to web pages that will hack their machine and cost them money.

There is some good advice at this page on not being caught out and what to do if you are:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/security/microsoft-phone-scam-dont-be-victim-tech-support-call-3378798/