Hinkey Phone Calls…
I received a phone call on my cell today and immediately recognized the call as a robo-call. The caller identified themselves as Visa and said that my card had been deactivated. It said that I could press 1 to reactivate it or call an 800 number to do so.
My heart did a little pitter patter while I tried to figure out WTF???!!! The little voices in my head screamed HANG UP in my hard of hearing ear since my other one is completely deaf. Anyway, I did listen to them (the little voices) after I wrote down all of the information the call provided. I also checked caller ID and copied the call from number and time. The person who invented that is a genius, but that is a story for another time.
I made a call to my bank and found that my card was fine and the numbers I had been given were not Visa’s phone numbers. My banker recommended that I call the police and report the fraud. I never was any good at following directions so the first thing I did was call my daughter. It sounds perverse but there was a method to my madness. You see we share a cell phone service so I figured her number was next.
Text to M: CALL FROM VISA FRAUD. STOP!!! DON’T TOUCH BUTTONS. DON’T GIVE INFORMATION!!!
Then I called the police. It took a couple of phone numbers to get where I needed to go and a promise that someone would call me back. By the time I had showered, dressed and started a load of laundry my phone rang. Deputy B asked for me, introduced himself and listened politely. I’ll spare you the redundancy of repeating my story but I provided him with all the numbers and times and what was said.
I couldn’t believe it!!! He Googled the phone numbers! I thought he would have some magic database at his fingers that he could put some multi-sensitive, ultra secret pass code into and find out all about the number. Nope! The man Googled it! I wonder if I could be a secret spy investigator?….nah. So sure enough, there it was on Google listed as a fraud number.
Deputy B praised my insight and told me that I had done everything exactly right. I really tried to let that boost my ego but the truth was I was nearly fooled. The call sounded VERY legitimate. My red flags were that they had called my cell and I didn’t think the bank had my cell phone. (When I checked I found I was right.) The second was the reception was bad on the call. The third was the little voices in my head. Sometimes they are misleading but when something sounds wrong, it usually is. If they had called my home phone rather than my cell I might have fallen for it and given out my info. Now as an independent lady who just received her last unemployment check with no job in sight I have to admit that it scared the crap out of me.
The dispatch officer told me they get 25 to 30 calls like this per day and Deputy B said too many people give out the information and are either charged exorbitant phone fees and/or their identity is stolen and/or someone empties their bank account. He also said that most of these calls are generated in another state, country or overseas and are rarely solved so he referred me to the Federal Trade Commission’s Web site: http://www.ftc.gov/idtheft and told me to file a complaint there as well. He gave me the report number for my county and told me to include it in the report I filed with the FTC. Again, after a few clicks I figured out what form to fill out. The site is pretty easy to navigate through and learned that Identity theft is a lot broader than just bank numbers and ID information. It can include the theft of your bills. How many times has that one strange bill been “lost in the mail”? There is much more. Deputy B recommended that I get a copy of my credit report in a month or so to make sure there is nothing strange on it. I have to give Cudo’s to the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department. They were kind and provided me with a wealth of information.
Criminals are getting more and more sophisticated and techno-savvy. I like to think that I am intelligent enough to detect them but after today I have to question that. For every crook out there, there is a new way to steal from you and me: too many for me to think up. It is important to file your report with your local police and the FTC so that they, and therefore we, can keep up with the new scams and fraud schemes.
I would recommend a fun, interactive website put up by the FTC to expand your knowledge http://www.onguardonline.gov/share-page.aspx. It sounds lofty doesn’t it? ;-/ but it is oh so important. Learn how to protect yourself. Better yet, help others learn how to protect themselves. The tools are all there at the websites provided.
Please, I would welcome your comments concerns and questions.