Nuisance Phone calls and scammers

I am afraid I am upon my soap box about this, so please excuse the rant  but we are getting very very fed up with this.

The girls and I at work are getting very fed up with these types of nuisance calls.  None of us give our work numbers out as we are not encouraged to take phone calls within office hours as we are there for a purpose.  The odd phone call is allowed but generally it is frowned upon.  However we have been receiving phone calls in to our direct lines.  Some of them  doing consumer research some are touting for PP work, some are touting for personal injury work - not a good move when we are a firm of solicitors that actually deals with personal injury referring to imaginary and I stress the word imaginary accidents; used more often or not just to make contact.  I class these calls as unsolicited and harassment calls.  Often the caller is only doing their job but what really gets our goat is that they do not take no for an answer.  That's when I get a little ruder with them because actually they are the ones who are being rude in the first place.

We have had so many of these calls and when we answer good morning....... solicitors if there is no one on the end of the phone and there often is not because it is a call centre call, we put the phone down.  Equally if they do not take the bishops warning and heed what we are saying I  and my colleagues go into a spiel about unsolicited calls and that I want my name removing from their list and generally I take no prisoners.  I take the view that if I want to do something about these sorts of things I will make contact with them myself.  I get a bit aggro about sales assistants as well - if I want help I will seek it.

We believe that these companies are going to unusual lengths to make a contact and we believe are surfing company websites to see whether there are direct line contacts listed on the company website.  The reason we believe this is that the calls are coming through our direct line numbers; but we also believe that unscrupulous internet providers are also selling on your details to third parties.

Then there is the very serious scammer these are the ones that no one really likes as they have no parameters and are just seriously unscrupulous.  They are very convincing and just after mum died there were a series of calls to the house in this vein and so we let my nephew deal with them.  He would keep them talking for about half an hour, playing thick (which he certainly is not) he is highly IT orientated but he enjoys winding them up.  The important thing is not to do anything that they say particularly online because if you open any links this is when you and your computer are vulnerable to problems.  If they will not take no for an answer just leave the conversation saying I want to talk to my son and daughter about this can you leave your number and I will get back to you.  Do not ring the number at all but if you suspect it is a scammer if you have a phone number you can report it to the local constabulary.  Do not let them hassle you or make you do anything you are not particularly happy about - hide behind family relatives but for goodness sake do not give any information out at all.  We have had cyber awareness training at work and you would be very surprised at the lengths that criminals will go to to obtain your details and/or money.  So do not give any details or any money whatsoever.  Never respond to emails from HMRC, Paypal or anyone like that.  If you need to check go in to the particular company by their own website and by no other method.  They are convincing and they are very very plausible.  This is big organised criminal activity where a lot of "money laundering" goes on.   So its best not to do anything if you are faced with this scenario and get a third party or the Police involved.  It I better to be safe than sorry.

If I get a phone number I do not know on my phone say from the Bath area it shows up on my phone.  I do not ring it back but I do type it into my computer.  If it is registered on a nuisance phone call site you have your answer more or less immediately and then I just delete the numbers.  They may try contacting you from different areas of the country but don't contact them just register them on the nuisance call sites if you want to and delete off your phone or block them.

I hope you do not experience any of the above but at least you know my take on things.  Keep in touch with your local area Neighbourhood Police Watch scheme and contact them if you are really concerned.  If you register with them they will send out periodically information to watch out for in your particular area.

Right must get a wriggle on.

Rant over - catch you later.

Pattypan

x

P.S. One of the tell tale signs with an email being a bit dodgy is if you have two different email addresses within the same email and if that is the case for goodness sake do not open any of the links just ditch it as a phishing scam.