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Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - Tracy Tull (16th Mar 2017 - 20:11:31) Please Share!! I would just like to warn everyone about a Scam that I was very nearly sucked into yesterday that one click on my laptop further I would have had my Bank Account cleared out. I received a phone call from a guy claiming to be Open Reach about our Sky Router. He said our Router wasn't working as well as it should be now that we had Fibre Optic connected. I believed him because Open Reach had been down our road only a few days previous to this. He asked me to log onto a pc or laptop so I could test the speed of the connection. So I went into Speedtest who he advised me which showed a reading of 11 Mbps, which is faster than our current which hasn't been much higher than 5 Mbps. So when he said that it should be much higher I again believed him. He asked me to download TeamViewer to my MacBook so that he could connect to the Router to check it. After connecting a box appeared in the right hand corner of my screen saying that BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS had connected. Again I trusted it. After doing a few tests a message appeared on my laptop saying that the Router was invalid, and that a new one was needed and I was due compensation of £204.65. He then transferred me to Sky so they could arrange an engineer to come out and replace the Router, so was arranged for 10am this morning. After having this time & date agreed I was then put through to Sky's Banking Dept to get the Compensation sorted. It was only at this time I started to get suspicious. They asked me to log on to my internet banking so I could verify who I was and so they could put the money in. I opened the page on the internet banking page but did not log on. I asked for proof of who they were and that I would look on another device. I also asked for a phone number I could ring to confirm this. I was given a phone number that was not a true number, so said to them no I'm not going to log on. Quite a few times they tried to pressure me and after I told them in no circumstances was I going to they hung up! I was literally one click away from losing everything!! I'm so upset & disgusted that this could have been life changing. It's been quite an emotional time because of how vulnerable I was until something in me jus stopped me. All of the 3 people I spoke to claiming they were Open Reach, Sky & Sky Banking Dept spoke with an Indian Accent. I rang Open Reach straight away and they said that they would NEVER phone they only send engineers out and that I should contact my Bank, Sky & Action Fraud straight away. I did this and had to have my Banking totally suspended, Sky have checked the Router and cannot see any issues, Action Fraud are looking into this, and to top it off I've had to erase absolutely everything off of my hard drive on my MacBook and lost so much personal things that I will never get back. So everyone please please be aware!!

Re: Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - Keith Thomas (17th Mar 2017 - 09:09:25) Tracey, don't kick yourself about this, you did brilliantly to get so far in and still have the presence of mind to realise something was wrong. The reality is that scams are designed to sound completely plausible so what you did was completely normal. I'm sure you feel completely gullible about what's happened and that's the sad emotional impact these idiots don't care about, but as you've said, you've prevented yourself from having your bank account emptied and you should feel proud of yourself for that. Sadly we now live in a world where our normal human instincts to trust people now have to change to trusting no-one. To anyone else reading this just remember, NEVER install any software on your computer on the instruction of a stranger. It will allow them to track every keystroke you make. These people will try to convince you they are genuine and may also include giving you your account number to something, but there have been so many security breaches with big companies that this data is readily available to anyone prepared to pay the price.

Re: Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - wendy (18th Mar 2017 - 10:13:47) Thank you so very much for sharing this with us. Especially for people like me who are not very computer literate. But what a sad affair it is when you are frightened to trust anyone on line. So glad you trigged it in time and thank you once again

Re: Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - Natalie (18th Mar 2017 - 13:42:43) Thanks for the warning Tracy. We've had 3 phone calls today from BT claiming we have problems with interent connection, which we don't. My husband was here the last time they called, told me to hang up as he had seen your post on here. Thanks.

Re: Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - D (18th Mar 2017 - 16:00:27) Any call I receive from an unrecognised number or the caller has an Asian accent I respond with "I'm sorry you appear to have the wrong number this is the Trading Standards Office or Police Central Call Office" So far not one caller has wanted to discuss the reason for their call!

Re: Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - Andrew (19th Mar 2017 - 20:28:37) The step whereby you let someone remote into your PC either by visiting a link or in this case using team viewer is already a serious risk, once they are connected you could have had malware pushed onto your PC, the same malware could be still on the machine waiting for you to login to the bank and it will fire of the details to the attacker, so am afraid whilst it sounds like you got away this time, I would still run a comprehensive anti virus scan over that PC and also change your online banking credentials and any other passwords such at your primary email etc, do the pw changing after the anti virus or from a different PC. This scam is a new breed of the Microsoft scam whereby they claim to be from Microsoft and that scam did involve malware.

Re: Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - KC (20th Mar 2017 - 14:43:55) Watch out in Liss the BT scammers are calling, today had three calls.

Re: Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - MH (22nd Mar 2017 - 09:16:23) Being mindful of the recent telephone scams where the caller's (scammer) aim is to get the person answering to say yes, this morning at 9am I played wonderful game of: Caller: Hello, can you hear ne? Me: No, can you hear me? Caller: I'm here, can you here me? Me: No, speak louder. Caller: CAN YOU HEAR ME? Ad nauseum until the caller hung up, kept me entertained.

Re: Urgent - Scam - Please be aware - Diane (23rd Mar 2017 - 16:28:06) Please be aware that the same scam is being used locally in the name of Talk Talk, not nice, don't get caught. Phone, TalkTalk or any other one, Sky B T ect.to make sure it is them you are talking to.

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