False Calls Pretending to Be BT

Since Monday morning I have received circa 20 calls from criminals who pretend to be a “technical department” of BT.

Of course they are no such thing.

Their purpose is to deceive those victims that they call and gain control of their victim’s pc.

It is pernicious. It is at first quite convincing. Their calls always have an incoming number identifier (also called a CLI) which is false.

So heads up - treat such calls with extreme caution - do not give anything out - do not even confirm any information such as your name if asked.

Terminate the call immediately - it’s not as if you are being rude - they are criminals determined to relieve of your personal data and your money by sounding helpful and plausible…

Did they ring your house phone or mobile?

Always on my land-line number.

We have a BT phone that announces calls that are not on our calling list so we can block them instantly, or just refuse to take them! It also won’t put calls through that withhold their number. It has certainly made a difference. Can you not report them to the telephone preference service?

Hi Gill

I am a long term client of TPS.

I believe the source of these calls is overseas hence the TPS is fairly toothless.

I receive so few calls now on my landline that when I do receive these ones - I can anticipate what to expect.

Silence on my part through to faux participation in their game to downright abuse on my part of the caller are the tools I choose to deploy.

I am not a victim here - my post was a warning to others- and intended to prevent them from being defrauded.

Oh yes of course the overseas calls. Well thank you for reminding us all to still be aware. Hopefully the government will find a way eventually to put a stop to them once & for all.

I usually hear a background hum. Sometimes I can hear their accomplices speaking to others. They obviously con some people. I think they will keep trying until they are mostly unsuccessful.

The more people are made aware the more times they will be unsuccessful! But unfortunately like all scammers, there is always someone that is naive enough to fall for it. I added my OHs number to the TPS service a couple of years ago to stop him getting calls on his mobile & they says then that it was overseas calls that were doing the most damage & that they hadn’t got a strategy to stop them. Hopefully in the near future they will come up with something.

I used to have a lot of calls like this until I got on a great idea. When they call and ask for me, I ask who it is and why they are calling. If it’s the Microsoft con, I then sound very sad and say that the person they have called for has been murdered. Not died, murdered. They never ever call back.

The rate of calls made to my landline has dropped to about two per week. Sometimes pretending to be BT and sometimes the TPS.

An interesting link from the DM on what and how:

The information the man from Nat West was giving out is what has been said before a million times! I think that sort of information should be advertised on billboards, maybe come up on the screen of your laptop, adverts on telly, radio etc to really hammer it home to people. These scammers are getting more & more astute, & so should the advertising in whatever way it works for people.