A scam phone calls and emails discussion.

[AM9]

I beg to differ. It is a humorous quotation and latterly attributed US film producer Samuel Goldwyn. Your version misses in its entirety it’s meant to be a joke.

Tracing Quotations - Quote InvestigatorVerbal Agreement

That's as I rermember (the saying) in my youth, - maybe it was changed to be less trite for British humour.

 

[najaB]

And, if you want to be pedantic:

• "A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it is written on" - "the paper it is written on" = "nothing" so;
• "A verbal agreement isn't worth nothing" - "isn't" = "is not"
• "A verbal agreement is not worth nothing" = "A verbal agreement is worth something"

 

[Hadlow Road]

And, of course, oral…

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

And, of course, oral…

Many well known American men pride themself with a "middle letter" in their name, but this one only reminds me of Oral B Toothpaste.....

 

[AM9]

Many well known American men pride themself with a "middle letter" in their name, but this one only reminds me of Oral B Toothpaste.....

Even fictitional characters, e.g. James T Kirk.

 

[Forty29]

Be aware of scammers pretending to be BT
caller's. My broadband contract is coming to an end and received calls from "BT" who l thought wanted to discuss a renewal but the first question they asked was what devices l use connected to the internet. Immediately put the phone down.

 

[najaB]

Be aware of scammers pretending to be BT
caller's. My broadband contract is coming to an end and received calls from "BT" who l thought wanted to discuss a renewal but the first question they asked was what devices l use connected to the internet. Immediately put the phone down.

It is possible that it was a legitimate call, however anyone calling you from BT (or a sales agency contractor) should be able to clearly identify themselves as such.

 

[Spamcan81]

Have had a couple of texts purporting to be from EE and telling me to click on a link to claim my EE reward points. No chance of me doing that, especially as I’m not on EE nor any provider associated with them.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

One thing about a landline with no display function in the rather old equipment and no mobile phone, is that text senders must find my system frustrating....

 

[AM9]

One thing about a landline with no display function in the rather old equipment and no mobile phone, is that text senders must find my system frustrating....

If you don't have any devices with text functions you are probably invisible to those who would defraud by that method.

 

[AndrewE]

If you don't have any devices with text functions you are probably invisible to those who would defraud by that method.

We get texts on our landline - voiced by a machine.

 

[Buzby]

One thing about a landline with no display function in the rather old equipment and no mobile phone, is that text senders must find my system frustrating....

Whilst in that position (many years ago) BT introduced a Text-to-Speech service to allow for receipt, so no possibility of being ‘invisible’. It wasn’t very good at handling abbreviations and interpretation of emojis like but this was before emoticons really arrived.

 

[Acey]

Had a rash of e-mails warning me that my "CLOUD "payments were invalid and I would lose all my stored media and my account would be closed! Funny cos I've never used Cloud !

 

[londonbridge]

I’ve had those cloud emails as well.

 

[Potatopotato]

And, if you want to be pedantic:

• "A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it is written on" - "the paper it is written on" = "nothing" so;
• "A verbal agreement isn't worth nothing" - "isn't" = "is not"
• "A verbal agreement is not worth nothing" = "A verbal agreement is worth something"

You are missing the interpretation of "isn't worth" as meaning "worth less then"

For example, "First class isn't worth paying the extra for", suggesting you think that first class is worth less than charged, not more.

 

[najaB]

For example, "First class isn't worth paying the extra for", suggesting you think that first class is worth less than charged, not more.

That's exactly the same thing: "First class is not worth paying the extra for" - where the extra is something.

 

[Jon_jpwh]

Had a rash of e-mails warning me that my "CLOUD "payments were invalid and I would lose all my stored media and my account would be closed! Funny cos I've never used Cloud !

I have had a succession of those from a company who claim to be Cloud Services UK, 14 File Street, London, United Kingdom. Out of curiosity I looked up the address and it doesn't exist. I do use Cloud but it's through Microsoft and my account is operating properly.

 

[MotCO]

I've recently been inundated with loads of Facebook emails. I don't post on Facebook, although I have an account, so is this their way of getting back at me?

 

[Forty29]

It is possible that it was a legitimate call, however anyone calling you from BT (or a sales agency contractor) should be able to clearly identify themselves as such.

Exactly, which they didn't. Also when I questioned them as to what they wanted to know when they asked, the caller got very pushy as if they knew l had cottoned on to their scam. Although not unusual these days the caller didn't speak very good English which made it even more suspicious.

 

[Jon_jpwh]

I haven't had one of these for ages but a text received this morning "Hey Dad, let me know if you get this message. I'll be using a temp phone for now as mine got wet earlier on, save this number please". Well I suppose it is possible as it has rained a lot today! I was tempted to reply asking them which one of my children they were but as I use WhatsApp with my daughters I am sure it wasn't from one of them. Presumably the intention is to identify a valid phone number and to try and obtain some money. Interesting that they correctly identified me as Dad but that may be just a lucky guess.

 

[Trackman]

I haven't had one of these for ages but a text received this morning "Hey Dad, let me know if you get this message. I'll be using a temp phone for now as mine got wet earlier on, save this number please". Well I suppose it is possible as it has rained a lot today! I was tempted to reply asking them which one of my children they were but as I use WhatsApp with my daughters I am sure it wasn't from one of them. Presumably the intention is to identify a valid phone number and to try and obtain some money.

A lot of these going about, I've had one.

 

[najaB]

Interesting that they correctly identified me as Dad but that may be just a lucky guess.

Well 50/50 on Mum v Dad, and anyone without kids would just ignore it.

 

[cb a1]

Well 50/50 on Mum v Dad, and anyone without kids would just ignore it.

I've never had a 'Hey Mum ...' but maybe a dozen 'Hey Dad ...', so somehow, the scammers have already determined what my gender is.

 

[najaB]

Do you have a WhatsApp profile picture?

 

[beeza1]

On my way home this morning, got an email from, allegedly BT, stating my details required immediate updating or I would lose access to my emails permanently, I was 99.9% certain it was a scam so I planned on forwarding it to BT's phishing dept when I got home, mysteriously it has now disappeared, I certainly didn't delete it.
Anyone else experienced this?

The other week I got a phone call, again purporting to be from BT offering me a free upgrade to full fibre at no cost to myself, I politely told him he was trying to scam me and hung up.
When I got home I reported it to BT, turns out it was a genuine call !
I apologised and was told no apology necessary, always better to be safe.
Got an engineer coming this week to install the necessary equipment.

 

[najaB]

On my way home this morning, got an email from, allegedly BT, stating my details required immediate updating or I would lose access to my emails permanently, I was 99.9% certain it was a scam so I planned on forwarding it to BT's phishing dept when I got home, mysteriously it has now disappeared, I certainly didn't delete it.
Anyone else experienced this?

I haven't but can posit what might have happened. If they were sufficiently sure that it was malicious they may well have deleted copies from all of the mailboxes it had been addresses too.

 

[Trackman]

I've had record spam/scam phone calls today, eight so far.

 

[AY1975]

I've just had an email purporting to be from the Microsoft Helpdesk saying they've found that my account details do not align with their latest security requirements and inviting me to click on a button marked "update account" to update my information to maintain full access and security. It says access to my account may be temporarily limited within 2-3 days if I do nothing.

It didn't come addressed to me by name, which is often a telltale sign that it's a scam (or if it comes addressed to "Dear [your email address]" or they've misspelt your name - indeed any misspellings or bad grammar are a bad sign).

 

[najaB]

Mandatory reminder: if you're going to forward that email to report it, please use the "Forward as attachment" option so that the message headers are included. Without that there's very little that can be done to trace the message back to its origin.

 

[ainsworth74]

Just had an interesting new scam call:

This is the Bank Security Department. We are calling you regarding a transaction we think is fraudulent. You have been charged £100 for train tickets from Edinburgh to London which is not something you usually buy. Press 1 to talk to Bank Security to cancel this charge.

I thought the choice of train tickets was an interesting new avenue to choose and not one that I've come across before! It can't be targeted either as it came on a work mobile that I don't normally use!