[deathwalkr]

1) Whatsapp calls: Usually from international numbers. Instant disconnect and use the block/report feature.

2) Regular calls: Used to be usually regarding investment usually in Hindi. Disconnect and block

3) So called NGOs. Disconnect and block.

It is tough to get rid of spam in this connected world but spam filters on phone (google phone app) and gmail is getting there in helping us out a bit.

[sinhead]

iOS- a few days ago I got a call from an international number (which I didn’t receive). True caller shows the number from Angola.
And today a message asking if we can talk.

[anjan_c2007]

My ingenious remedy to circumvent such calls/messages /easy cash jackpots that you prima facie don't deserve etc is to have two SIM cards and two different smart phones as I always say, like :-

(1) a doddering but working smartphone with the SIM number that we have very dutifully and liberally given publicly everywhere including his bank account/s, UIDAI, shares, mutual funds, RTO (they too ask for numbers these days for any transaction), college, office and what not? Disable the Internet from this phone and its better to keep this at home. Only when some important calls are expected from the places where you have mentioned this number, say a call is due for a bank transaction and so on, then this phone can be carried. Enable the Internet on this phone for a short time in your presence only.

(2) The second phone with another SIM can be a state of the art 5G smartphone or i phone that we can carry everywhere. This number should be known only to our personal contacts. This phone number doesn't reach scammers and we have peace of mind while carrying and using it. We shouldn't mention this number in any record of the number seekers in the list as above in (1).

However foolproof and secure the establishments say they keep our personal information, they are the culprits as some mole within gets handsomely paid by crooks to reveal all personal information and contact details. Hence instead of keeping their clients/customers/ employees/ students, personal details "foolproof and secure" they make us insecure fools.

[warrioraks]

Originally Posted by anjan_c2007

(1) a doddering but working smartphone with the SIM number that we have very dutifully and liberally given publicly everywhere including his bank account/s, UIDAI, shares, mutual funds, RTO (they too ask for numbers these days for any transaction), college, office and what not? Disable the Internet from this phone and its better to keep this at home. Only when some important calls are expected from the places where you have mentioned this number, say a call is due for a bank transaction and so on, then this phone can be carried. Enable the Internet on this phone for a short time in your presence only.

I have thought of doing this multiple times. But never did. Because I don’t want to call people at home asking for OTPs on the transactions I do on the move.

Curious how do you manage that?

[pranavt]

Another small tip, since I've read about this happening quite often now. If you give your phone/tablet to your kids, parents or anyone else, make sure they do not install any applications. Same thing with their own phones; apps not allowed without approval from a parent or someone who can vet the application (Both Google and Apple provide this feature through their "Family" accounts). People calling and asking you to install screen-sharing applications has become common-place.

Soon, these scammers will be buying existing applications on the marketplace, including their own malware into the app and pushing the update. This has already been happening with browser extensions (both on Chrome and Firefox, with extensions being sold to bad faith companies without the users being informed), and the next step is applications on the store. Since applications are usually set to auto-update, people won't notice; the only tell will be a new permission request.

One thing I absolutely detest is Indian companies not allowing people to paste usernames/passwords into their forms, whether they be banks, or government sites or the like. In the day of using password managers and having separate passwords for every website (usually 12+ characters and a mix of alphanumeric characters and symbols), how the hell do they expect you to type that password unless you make it extremely simple to remember (negating the whole point of having separate passwords)? It's a brain-dead move made by people who do not understand security.

Thankfully, password manager extensions within the browser can bypass the paste restriction. But that brings me to my previous point. In my case, I've just self-hosted an instance of Bitwarden for my family and they store all their passwords on my personal server.

[bravo82in]

If it’s not an automated call don’t ignore and disconnect. If you have time engage them into a conversation and waste their time. Ask a query and then put them on hold for say 30 seconds unhold for 5 seconds and put them on hold again. They have targets to meet. Wasting their time ensures same people will never call you back.
If it’s an automated call just answer and mute it. Till the time your call is going they can’t make a second call. This strategy seems to be working in my case.
Once I asked their loan walas to come over to a random address to collect documents, made them wait for 2 hours and then blocked their phone number. Never got a call for person loan from Bajaj Finance ever again.

Never ever share your real name with these departmental stores, restaurants etc. Use an alias name so that when you get a call you will know you are connected to a spammer.

[Clown Prince]

I am on WhatsApp beta which gives option for contacts only calls. I do used to get international calls mostly from Palestine. So a welcome for beta users.
But point 3 of loan and CC spam is a pain I use to get at least 25 of these messages daily. If I include those game messages of rummy or dream 11 etc then number crosses 50 easily. So much spam that finding useful messages is a pain I have pin all the important messages but even that has a limit.
Recently I started getting health and check up messages as well. Funnily I don't get any insurance messages. Not that I want another spam. Thanks to all this so many unread messages almost everywhere except telegram.
I am getting genuine bank messages BTW. I even applied for IDFC card and they said I'm not eligible and I was like then why are you spamming me everywhere. Forget messages or mails IDFC guy was so desperate that he called my relatives as well., those in my family banking.

[Tucker48]

When the govt itself is in the business of selling data, we can't expect much. I registered a company in 2019 and since then I'm receiving calls for startup loans, although genuine but all my attempts to make them stop were futile but their call frequency is less like once in a month.

UPI, a much celebrated innovation by the govt as they say we did it first but it's not rocket science and QR payment was available in the USA and China much earlier. But that's a closed loop system where the money is transferred only between users of a particular app. Why so? Security and liability falls on that particular company. Here no one is liable.

In USA, customers can even charge back for debit card transactions and the money is credited to customers account in hours. Then the banks claim that money from merchants (visa/mastercard etc). And that takes like upto 30 days.

Till now it was a click bait scam or job scam and like that but below is a news of new type of scam unheard of before. Please spread awareness, especially among the elderly ones.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/ind.../100267857.cms

[fhdowntheline]

My bigger problem in this digital age is that your identity is your mobile number. There is no way that you can be identified otherwise. This is why data has become the new 'oil'. Lack of effective pivacy laws makes it worse.

[WiseFool]

On Android there is DND app built by TRAI. I've been using this app for almost a month now. Once you install the app first register for DND. Next step is to complain against any call or sms in the DND app. It will then get investigated and action will be taken. For the last 2 weeks i hardly get any spam calls. How do I know this works - You get a message with a reference number for every complaint. When the complaint is closed you'll get a message with what action was taken e.g. telemarketer was given warning or put under restricted usage or blacklisted.

Do i believe this - Yes because I've got calls from some of these guys stating that they got an email from TRAI based on my complaint and they were begging me to withdraw the complaint or else their lines would get disconnected. I refused in every case.

If more and more people are aware of this app and start complaining then it will make a whole load of difference.

PS: If you kill Bajaj Finance all your worries will go away

[rajwheelz]

From what I experienced with respect to spam calls (I majorly suffered from phone calls).
This boils down to two sides of the coin.

1. Are businesses Ethically Right Or Legally Right?
2. Are end users ignorant Or having blatant disregard for Fine Print

Point 2 first. In-spite of being in the IT industry for a quarter century, it's only recently I have paid attention to fine print. The devil is surely in the details. You *should not* be clicking 'Next' 'Next' 'Next' and be in a hurry to get that s/w installed. Take time to read the privacy section and how your data is shared.

Sometimes you just cant help. You are bound to agree to a lot just so you can use the software ( e.g Gmail, Android etc. )

But some you can. Go through the Terms & Conditions of some popular payment apps. They register as a platform and treat businesses as "third party providers" and you implicitly consent to your data being shared to them.
Same with handyman service companies, and many other like those.

I could solve this problem only by doing the below. After re-registering for DND on Airtel
1. Use only my bank app to do UPI payments
2. If any app T&A is ambiguous, find an alternative or don't use it
3. Prefer an app which uses only mail id for login and no mobile numbers
4. Got into the habit again for more in-store shopping

To Point 1 now.
I don't see many businesses who have ethics placed higher than legal rules. But some I surely have. I have some apps on my phone, who have potential access to my contacts, they call me on regular basis, but to date no spam calls & no data sharing. Their privacy policy is extremely clear.
And then there are these...Meh! Lets leave it there.

[ais]

When browsing for property, loan, insurance or any new item, do so in Incognito browser. Else your number and details are broadcast to vendors and you will get calls incessantly.

I block such calls and update Truecaller. Sometimes I flirt with female marketing callers too. Depending on my mood and time available, I do a Murga/Ghanta Singh on the callers too. These are my strategies!😉

[abhi7013]

When you have educated IT folks falling for such scams, it's pretty scary to imagine how others may easily fall prey.

Case in point - my dad, who was in IT when it initially boomed in the late 80s and 90s, and who retired 4 years back from IBM where he was working for over 10yrs.
He gets an SMS from BESCOM saying electricity would be cut that night due to non payment. Coincidentally we had forgotten to pay by the due date so he thought it was genuine. When he called the number mentioned in the SMS, following happened:

1: Person on the other end was speaking hindi but my father assumed that the support could be outsourced as BESCOM is a local govt body - 1st mistake
2: He was told to download an app from playstore (I don't remember which but am sure it was a mirroring app) in order to proceed. He downloaded - 2nd mistake. He should have known the nature of the app while downloading it.
3: He was asked to make a small payment on BESCOM portal for 11rs to see if payment method and the portal were working fine before paying the actual electricity bill.
4: Once transaction was initiated for 11rs, the scammer initiated two transactions from his end for 40k and 10k. When dad opened the SMS to see the OTP for his transaction, it was too late. OTP for the scammer's transactions were also visible which he used.
Result: 50k debited from the credit card.

Hearing the commotion when he found out 50k was debited, i went, took the phone and disconnected the call. Apparently the scammer had initiated another transaction for 70K and as he couldn't see the OTP (I had uninstalled the app once I understood what transpired), he called back again. As the app was no longer there, I received the call and he says to type "Y" and send it a number that he will give, and this will initiate a refund of the 50K which was actually a "technical issue". I promptly cut the call, opened the latest SMS from the bank and it said "we noticed you have not entered the OTP for you transaction of 70K. Send a message by typing Y to confirm the transaction or N to decline". It read something similar and going by what the scammer told me, he wanted me to respond "Y" so that he could process the 70K transaction as well! He actually kept calling back 6-7 times!

At the cyber crime branch, we were shocked to see 11-12 people along with us who had come to register a similar complaint. One elderly gentleman had lost 7.2 lakhs in 5-6 different transactions during that one BESCOM scam call.
Request everyone to pass on this message so that people are aware. Here's a screenshot of BESCOM's website, where they've uploaded a warning almost 4 months after this episode. Sad state of affairs.


As my dad's now retired and CIBIL doesn't matter to him, I've told him to not pay anything towards the credit card. As the transaction happened via OTP, it's a fair transaction as per the bank. However, there should have been other security measures for transactions with higher amounts like having an automated call to confirm the payment, over and above the OTP, like how some other banks do (this was Citibank BTW).

[deathwalkr]

Originally Posted by abhi7013

As my dad's now retired and CIBIL doesn't matter to him, I've told him to not pay anything towards the credit card. As the transaction happened via OTP, it's a fair transaction as per the bank. However, there should have been other security measures for transactions with higher amounts like having an automated call to confirm the payment, over and above the OTP, like how some other banks do (this was Citibank BTW).

I am sorry to hear about this untoward incident. But won't not paying credit card bill have the bank enforce recovery procedures?

As for calls for high transactions, what is "high" transaction? Will vary from customer to customer right?

Sorry state of affairs, all these scams :(

[SideView]

Originally Posted by abhi7013

When you have educated IT folks falling for such scams, it's pretty scary to imagine how others may easily fall prey.

Case in point - my dad, who was in IT when it initially boomed in the late 80s and 90s, and who retired 4 years back from IBM where he was working for over 10yrs.
He gets an SMS from BESCOM saying electricity would be cut that night due to non payment. Coincidentally we had forgotten to pay by the due date so he thought it was genuine. When he called the number mentioned in the SMS, following .

You are able to block the transactions if reported quickly. Atleast with certain bank they share a link together the message of debit asking to report if it is not. Citibank has it. So was it of no help?


In my case without sharing any otps or installing any apps amounts got deducted that too from debit account. Filing a police report helped get back all the amount.(ps i reported the issue to customer care within 1 hour)