5 common phone scams catching out victims in 2021

Scams that start with unsolicited phone calls are becoming increasingly common as many cyber-crooks are shying away from traditional phishing emails and calling victims directly.

Here we outline some of the latest telephone scams going around, as well as some tips on how to avoid these scams. Note that these are not the only phone scams in circulation right now, but reports of all of the above are on the rise.

Internet Service Provider disconnecting your Internet

During 2020 and 2021 when many of us have been in lockdown and thus more dependent on our Internet to keep us in touch with family and friends and even our workplaces, scams threatening to disconnect our Internet connections have surged.

These scams will typically claim to come from a person’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) and will claim the person’s Internet is about to be disconnected. Some variants may claim this is because of “illegal activity” or perhaps for billing issues.

Whatever the reason, the victim is pressured into giving up personal information about themselves (making them vulnerable to identity fraud) or pressured into paying a fine or payment. We discuss these scams in more details on their own post here.

Note: Scammers may also claim to be maintaining or upgrading a person’s Internet connection and will attempt to trick the victim into handing over access to their computer by installing remote desktop software onto it. The scammer then uses this to infect the person’s device with malware.

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Unauthorised order from your account (Amazon scam)

Amid lockdowns as many took to the Internet to do their shopping, we’ve also seen a significant rise in phone scams claiming a victim’s credit card or online account has been billed for an order that the victim didn’t make.

It’s a scam to trick a victim into believing someone has purchased something from their account when no such thing has actually happened. Most frequently the call will claim to come from Amazon. However this can also be other retailers where a person is likely to have an account or it make claim to come from the victim’s bank.

The scammer will often use a pre-recorded message and tell the victim they’ve been charged and they need to call a number or press a number on their keypad in order to cancel the order or process a refund, and this is when the crooks trick the victim into handing over sensitive banking information.

Again we break this scam down in more detail here.

Tech Support

While not a particularly new phone scam, the tech support is perhaps the most notorious phone scam of the last few years. Such scams can take on many guises, but nearly all of them will involve a scammer pretending to be a technical support agent claiming there is something seriously wrong with the victim’s computer and the victim needs to hand over access to their device to the scammer, who is posing as a technical support agent.

Often the tech support scammer will tell the victim over the phone that the victim’s device is infected with malware and that they need access to it to remove it.

However, the scammers will then proceed to [quote ironically] actually infect the victim’s device with malware. The scammers will then often charge the victim money to remove the malware they just installed. The scammer may claim to work for a well-known company such as Microsoft.

More information on these technical support phone scams are here.

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Social Security/National Insurance Number compromised

New to 2020 and prolific during 2021, this relatively new scam claims that a victim’s social security number (USA) or national insurance number (UK) has been compromised by thieves and the victim needs to dial a number of press a number on their keypad to be issued a new number. (Note that the scam is also prevalent in other countries using their respective insurance numbers.)

The scammer often claims to be calling from a government or law enforcement agency. However this is a scheme to lure victims into handing over personal information about themselves and thus making themselves vulnerable to identity fraud.

Pay your tax or face arrest

A particularly nasty phone scam that has gained in frequency is the claim that the victim will be arrested for unpaid tax unless they pay over the phone. This scam may begin with the claim that there is an arrest warrant out in the victim’s name.

The aim here is to panic a victim into paying a fine over the phone. Of course the victim ultimately ends up paying the crooks, who will claim to be calling from law enforcement or the tax entity in the victim’s country (e.g. IRS/HMRC.)