Attention! New methods of telephone fraud. Cell phone scams and scams

09.03.16 326 664 0

9 signs that a scammer is calling you

How to understand that you are being scammed over the phone

Even if the fraudster knows the card number and expiration date, it is not easy to steal money from it.

Most cards are protected by 3-D Secure - a system that requires confirmation of large transactions with a code from SMS. To find out the treasured code, attackers use: sending letters, spamming on social networks, faking bank websites and making phone calls on their behalf.

Maxim Matyushchenko

experienced buyer

Imagine: Saturday evening, cups of tea, a TV series crackling on the laptop. Suddenly a call: “Hello, this is about your card.” If the dialogue follows one of the scenarios below, end the conversation and report to the bank.

Sign 1

The call comes from an unknown number or from a mobile phone

The bank always calls from the official numbers listed on the website. It is not necessary to remember the number, but it must at least be local or federal (8−800).

Sign 2

An SMS supposedly from the bank arrives in a new correspondence

SMS from the bank also come from one or two numbers that are already familiar to you. In any case, do not rush to click on the links in the message.

Sign 3

The interlocutor cannot answer simple questions

Scammer

Hello, someone from the bank is bothering you. We see a suspicious transaction on your card.

On what card?

According to your main

Give the number

Bank

Hello, someone from the bank is bothering you. We see a suspicious transaction on your card, the last digits are 1234. Cash withdrawal in another city, the amount is 8,000 rubles.

Oh, I filmed this, thanks!

The call center operator sees on the screen everything that the bank knows about you. If the interlocutor is not ready to answer a simple question, for example, tell the card balance, this is a scammer.

Sign 4

Alarming message or call subject

To scare the victim and force them to quickly take the desired action, scammers come up with frightening scenarios. They say that the bank has blocked the account, assessed a fine for the loan, or that a suspicious transaction was carried out.

In such a situation, do not rush, two minutes will not solve anything. Call the bank and find out. Call only the phone number indicated on the website or on the map.

Sign 5

The interlocutor asks for card details or SMS code

Scammer

To cancel a suspicious transaction, tell me your card number and the code on the back.

1234 5678 9012 3456, code 789.

Great, you will now receive an SMS, tell me what the numbers are?

Bank

We blocked the card and ordered a reissue. The courier will call you to arrange a meeting. We have temporarily blocked funds for the suspicious transaction, and the security service is studying the situation.

An SMS code is the same as a password. Bank employees will never ask him, and they already know the card number.

If you received a call supposedly from a bank and you want to make sure the interlocutor is reliable, ask his name. After this, call the official bank number - the one indicated on the card and on the website - and ask to be switched to the person who called you.

Sign 6

They promise you benefits without effort

To lure the victim, scammers promise a solid income quickly and effortlessly: super profitable work, win-win competitions, courses that will make everyone rich. But there is no free cheese, even in a mousetrap: you won’t get money, you’ll only lose it. For example, scammers will take an advance payment for training and disappear. Or they will promise a prize and lure you out of your card details, supposedly to transfer your winnings.

Sign 7

The interlocutor is rushing you or trying to convince you

The bank employee will never insist or rush. He's at work.

Sign 8

Errors in message

The bank has vigilant editors, but scammers write with errors. Don't let the illiterate criminal fool you.

Sign 9

The sender's name is misspelled

Fraudsters register addresses similar to bank names. This is where the property of the brain works, which reads the meaning of words if the letters in them are written. When such an SMS arrives, you should also be alerted by the fact that the message was in a new correspondence.

conclusions

If you are not sure about the interlocutor, ask him to tell you the card number or account balance.
Don't panic if they write to you about blocking your account. Call the bank using the number on the website or on the card.
Don't be fooled by promises of easy money or benefits without effort.
If the other person is rushing you or asking for an SMS code, you are talking to a scammer.
Read messages from the bank carefully. Fraudsters use sender names similar to bank names and make mistakes in the text.

Today, a great variety of telephone deceptions have proliferated, however, they are usually based on several standard and fairly simple schemes. Moreover, there are clearly illegal ways to extract money from you, and there are those that even the prosecutor’s office cannot get into. Here are the most common ones.

SMS quiz

Send as many SMS as possible to number such and such and win a TV (car, trip, etc.)! Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And in small letters it is written that each short message costs one, two, or even more US dollars, and every thousandth wins. So it turns out, figuratively, that at best you win $100, having spent $1000 on email messages. A very common “scam” that still finds its audience.

SMS giveaway

An SMS is received with the following content: “System message. Promotion! Transfer money to such and such number and get exactly twice as much!” Of course, all lovers of easy money start the test small - send, say, 100 rubles. They receive 200 rubles in return. They send 200 rubles and receive 400 rubles. Wow, it works! And here it can suffer. They send, say, 2000 rubles - everything that was in the account - and in response - nothing. They just played a giveaway game with you using mobile transfer systems.

SMS dating

An SMS arrives from a supposedly girl with an offer to get acquainted. The target audience is exclusively men. A friendly lisp begins, a thirst to quickly get to know each other better. He even sends you a photo... In general, we send a number of messages to an unfamiliar number, and then we look - again a decent amount has leaked somewhere from the account. Someone masterfully played the role of a “girl wanting to meet someone.”

“Deposit 200 rubles into your account. Masha"

The most widespread and difficult to prove type of fraud, which almost every mobile phone owner has encountered. An SMS with the request: “I’ve run out of money, top up my account. Masha." Some subscribers, especially people of retirement age, top up the account of scammers, thinking that someone they know or close is writing. Then, with the help of “mobile transfer” systems, the money is transferred to other phone numbers of the scammers, so that they cannot be hooked on the first displayed number in the phones of numerous victims.

Give me the money!

You will receive an SMS notifying you that funds have been deposited into your account. Hmm... A few seconds later the call. The voice reports that it has just mistakenly transferred money to the wrong number and asks to return it using the Mobile Transfer service. In fact, they demand a refund from your user account - which in fact has not changed. Not every subscriber will immediately check their balance, but has the account actually been replenished?

We want to deceive you. Confirm

Many operators have multiple tariffs for services for subscribers. When ordering a service, we send an SMS message to a short number. In response, we receive a request to confirm something additional (age, desire to use the service, etc.). And the answer to such a request is charged according to some cosmic figures. Again, deception.

A year of free calls!

They are calling supposedly from a radio station as part of a joint promotion with your operator. Send the codes of two brand new payment cards and get a year of free calls! Of course, the telecom operator does not carry out any promotions in this way, and your money has been added to the accounts of the scammers. Various super-favorable lifetime rates may also be offered.

GSM Cloning

Your SIM card, having been in the hands of another person, can be copied to the computer’s memory using a special device, and from there to a new SIM card. Pirated equipment for these purposes can today be found freely available online. Moreover, the user of a duplicate of your SIM card - and with it your number - can act quietly and carefully, so that you do not immediately detect an unjustified systematic leak of money from your personal account. How to protect yourself? Just like when using a credit card, never let your SIM card out of your sight, much less into the hands of strangers.

Helpdesk-1 speaking

A call to a telephone is represented by a subscriber service. The incoming phone number is either mobile or not detected. Dear client, says engineer on duty Ivan Vasiliev. Our service transfers phones to another communication frequency (some technical work is being carried out, etc.). Phone number, balance, everything else will not change, don’t worry! Dial *145 on your phone keypad... Attention! *145* is the beginning of the combination of numbers that begins the transfer of money from the personal account of one subscriber to the personal account of another. You voluntarily transfer money as part of the Mobile Transfer service. Irrevocably. Neither the operator nor the police will help you return what was naively lost.

Helpdesk 2 speaking

Hello, technical support service, engineer on duty Vasily Ivanov. We're having some technical problems here, your number is accidentally blocked and the caller ID information is being transmitted incorrectly. Please call the number (they start dictating)... Phone number of a paid service. That is, for a call to this phone number N is withdrawn from your personal account, which is limited by the imagination of the “service organizers”. You should know that the technical services of cellular operators do not make such calls in principle.

Helpdesk 3 speaking

Hello, technical support service, engineer on duty Ivan Vasiliev. You changed your tariff plan without notifying our cellular communication company (did not make payments on time, used roaming services, etc.). You need to pay such and such a fine amount by sending the payment card number to the specified phone number.

Helpdesk-4 speaking

Technical support, Vasily Ivanov (call or SMS). Your phone is blocked, you need to call such and such a number. At the other end of the line there is an answering machine that will briefly explain what you need to do so as not to lose your old number or confirm that you will continue to use the services of this network. There, of course, they will ask you to dial a certain combination of numbers to unlock. Such spam mailings are usually carried out en masse, targeting gullible users.

Relative in trouble

A call from a friend (colleague) of your relative or loved one. Like, something bad happened (road accident, explosion, things got bad on the street, accident, other emergency). A call from someone else's number because the phone of your wife (husband, child, grandmother, aunt, uncle, etc.) has run out of battery. There is not enough money in the account, and in order to solve problems, you still need to call a lot of places. They urgently demand to top up the balance of an unknown number. Fast! It’s better to buy a top-up card and dictate the secret code. A pure trust game with many variations on the theme of people worrying about their loved ones. Night calls are especially effective, especially if the voice introduces itself as a traffic police officer or another law enforcement or security service. There are also more terrible cases when people are faced with blackmail and asking for kickbacks in continuation of the theme “your child was caught buying drugs.”

SMS request

I receive an SMS with approximately the following content: “I have problems, call such and such a number, if the number does not answer, put so many rubles on it and call again.” Sometimes you just receive a message: “I’m in the hospital, put money on the number and I’ll call you back later.” You should not immediately rush to top up the account of an unfamiliar number - most likely, this is a case of blatant fraud.

False prize

The host of a famous music radio station allegedly calls and congratulates you on winning a valuable prize. To receive a prize, you need to call within a minute to such and such a radio station number, where you will once again be congratulated on your victory. It is possible that a feeling of joy has already come over you, and you have become more trusting. In addition, you only need to buy a top-up card within half an hour and tell the “DJ” its details - the last condition in order to collect the prize, for example, to pay VAT. At the radio station itself, as it turns out later, no prize awaits you.

Expensive short number

Using short numbers (a set of four digits), you can call the rescue service, popular radio stations, get legal support, contact an insurance company, call a taxi and much more. Such services are provided by third-party providers under a formal agreement with your cellular operator on mutually beneficial terms. For the services provided to each client of a cellular operator, the service provider probably deducts some percentage of the profit. You call a specially indicated number for the appropriate reason. A person will provide you with information. He will question you in detail, take a minute or two to find answers to your specific questions. Well, then you find out that for a conversation with a polite girl, a tidy sum was debited from your account, say $30 for 10 minutes of conversation! Deception? No, everything is fair. At the same time, various cunning techniques are actively used to hide information about the cost of such services. So that it is impossible to be held liable under the article “consumer deception.”

The merciless deception of a deceiver

A letter came to my email with an offer to download a program that could find a secret code for a hundred-dollar payment card. To do this, you need to enter the code of a card worth, say, $10 in the program field. The real ten dollars float away to the scammer, and in return you get a completely useless set of numbers.

False corporate tariff

You receive an email message from an alleged employee of a large company who is responsible for connecting to a corporate tariff plan. They say, if you wish, for a certain bribe of about $50, you can be connected on favorable terms. At the end of the day, they promise to send by mail a SIM card with lifetime unlimited local communication, activated international roaming and a constantly maintained account balance of, say, $300. Moreover, you can choose any Big Three operator as a telecom operator, since we are talking about connecting to a large transnational offshore corporation. The offer is valid for a week, since new employees are being hired, and all the paperwork needs to be done “on the sly.”

Deceitful corporate tariff-2

Private offer for a similar tariff plan. Without signing any contract. At a private meeting with an agent, handing over paper money, you receive a real SIM card in your hands. It is indeed activated, and the agreed amount is in the account. But the buyer's happiness does not last long, because... the seller, having received the money, goes straight to the subscriber service center at the operator’s office and, being the only legal owner of the number, simply receives a free duplicate of the SIM card that he allegedly lost. The one that remains in the hands of the buyer becomes invalid.

Deceitful content provider

The website of a usually small content provider indicates a number of interesting services that can be ordered for permanent use - access to movie collections, discounts on wap traffic, caller location services, etc. But in addition to sending an SMS application to a short number, you are asked to dial a special code to activate it. And the code turns out to be a number assigned to the provider of paid telephone lines in the countries of America, Africa, Asia, Europe, etc. As a result, the user receives a bill for an expensive international call. No right to dispute written-off funds.

You didn’t sign an agreement - you still have to pay!

In January and February 2010, new information emerged about messages demanding payment of a mobile phone bill. Although people did not sign contracts for the indicated numbers. It turned out that the scammers used the passport data of people not involved in the agreement, subsequently presenting them with certain monetary demands. According to the MTS company, in 2009, about 20 thousand complaints were recorded regarding fictitious contracts with this operator in Russia.

It costs a lot to unsubscribe from spam

You receive an SMS that you are subscribed to the weather forecast service, 7 days free, or to another unexpected spam mailing. To disconnect, you need to dial STOP to such and such a four-digit number. There is, of course, not a word about this number on the operator’s official website. And the money in your account will noticeably decrease.

Is it fantastic to be charged a cosmic amount for picking up the phone?

Call from an unknown number. Once you press the “reply” button, money will be debited from your account. The end result will be a decent amount. SMS with a request to call back to an unknown phone works the same way. Most likely, scammers connect to the network in another region, and the “call at the interlocutor’s expense” service is activated on the number. And the debit goes through a channel created by scammers specifically for these purposes.

Finally. According to Beeline, in January-February of this year, the number of requests for fraud to the central help desk fluctuated at 1000-1200 messages per day. Often employees of mobile operators themselves, dealers and especially content providers of various sizes are involved in mobile fraud. The leaders in fraudulent abuses today are content providers - small firms that enter into partnership agreements with mobile operators to provide additional services in the field of mobile communications. They are focused on quickly generating income and leaving the market.

In this regard, mobile operators began to reduce the number of partners who have the right to sell pictures, video clips, melodies and other types of content for mobile phones to their subscribers. After all, with a smaller number of providers, it is easier to monitor the quality and characteristics of the transmitted information. Also this year, mobile operators began to revise partnership agreements, introducing a clause on the collection of fines comparable to the partner’s monthly revenue on a particular short number. Thus cutting off unscrupulous players. Forcing others to more carefully conduct control measures among their subcontractors, because often short numbers are subleased, and it turns out that this third party becomes a fraudster, and not the main tenant.

Complex contractual relationships sometimes cause difficulties in determining the guilt of specific companies. But in any case, the name of the cellular operator itself suffers. As a rule, we blame them for all mobile sins. This forces them to become more and more actively involved in the fight against mobile fraud, to develop the function of requesting confirmation from the subscriber (to send a message to a short number, to pay for a service, etc.).

Talk to your operator, demand, threaten to refuse services in favor of a competitor. Today, it is extremely important to master the topic of security on the mobile network, as well as on the Internet and the road network. Even if the light turns green, you should still look around before crossing the road. What if someone rushes towards you at breakneck speed and doesn’t have time to slow down? Then you will blame the faulty traffic lights?

By the way

The Arbitration Court of the Magadan Region found the mobile operator guilty of unlawfully debiting funds from a subscriber's account when using short SMS numbers. Until now, liability in similar situations was borne by content providers who rented such numbers from operators. If the courts take into account the decision of the Magadan arbitration, mobile operators will face serious fines: in 2009, fraudulent schemes through SMS payments accounted for $38-45.6 million.

In order to steal money from an account, attackers need bank card information. The easiest way to get them is to call the victim and fraudulently find out the card number, expiration date and CVC code. The hunters for other people's finances appear to be anyone: bank security officers, representatives of the Pension Fund, and utility workers. Depending on the chosen role, fraudsters give different reasons why they need card data. For example, utility companies report a debt for electricity and offer to pay it right now, in the so-called mobile mode, otherwise sanctions will be applied to the defaulter for electricity. Bankers may refer to the need to identify personal data, which cannot be done without complete information on the card.

After a confused citizen tells his interlocutor his card details, he will not pay any debt for electricity: the money from his account will move into the pockets of scammers.

Remember: neither the Pension Fund, nor utility companies, nor the bank calls their clients and wards with a request to dictate information from a plastic card. This information is confidential and only one person should know it: the cardholder. If you suddenly receive a call from a bank or housing management company, you can politely inform the caller that you cannot talk now, then call the bank or housing management company back and ask if their representatives are engaged in such calls.

Sending messages

To achieve their goals, telephone attackers use not only calls, but also SMS messages. “Last year, methods of fraud using SMS mailings also evolved. An SMS arrives with the text: “A purchase has been made on your card and a certain amount has been blocked, call such and such a number,” said Artem Sychev, deputy head of the main department of security and information protection of the Bank of Russia.

According to him, after the cardholder contacts the criminals, they try to find out his card number, account, CVC code and other data. As a rule, SMS messages are sent to persons in prison, which interferes with the investigation of crimes.

Asking for a bribe

The victims of this type of fraud are most often elderly people. In fact, the scheme has existed for a very long time, but is still popular among scammers. It looks like this: Grandma/Grandfather/Dad/Mom get a call supposedly from the police and report that their children/grandchildren have been detained, and in order not to open a criminal case, they demand a certain amount from the stunned relatives. Not long ago, a group of swindlers who engaged in such deception were detained in Moscow. Their victims were 32 pensioners, who sent the criminals a total of 3 million rubles.

In such situations, you should never lose your cool. After talking with the so-called. law enforcement officer, call your relatives back and find out if it is true that they committed a crime and were detained by the police. By the way, even if real police officers actually called you and demanded money in order not to open a criminal case, keep in mind that giving a bribe is also a crime.

Intimidate

There are also scammers pretending to be employees of medical institutions. The point of their activity is to convince the interlocutor that he is terminally ill and, if he wants to save his life, he must as soon as possible transfer a tidy sum for treatment in an Israeli/German/Chinese clinic. “Isn’t there such a large amount right now? It’s okay, transfer the advance payment, and pay the rest of the amount when the treatment begins.”

Treatment, however, will never begin. Having received the money, the scammers, who recently took care of the pensioner’s health, disappear in an unknown direction. By the way, there are cases where telephone scammers read their diagnoses to their victims, as if they were holding a medical card in their hands.

Here we can cite a story from the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where attackers contacted a seventy-year-old pensioner who had undergone surgery. They promised a resident of Lesosibirsk a quick recovery after surgery if he bought medications from them. As a result, the man used these drugs for two years, but they never helped. During this time, he lost 730 thousand rubles, reports the local Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Numbers are confused

Many of us have confused our phone number when trying to top up our account, especially if it’s not our own number, but a relative’s or colleague’s. The money can then be returned by writing a corresponding statement at the office where it was deposited. Fraudsters pretend that they do not know about this possibility. It looks like this: a call rings, at the other end of the line a woman in tears says that she transferred 500-1000 rubles to your number, and she lives in the village, and for her this is a huge amount. In general, please return it.

You check the balance, indeed, there are 500-1000 rubles more. Touched by the village woman's story, citizens go to the nearest cell phone store and deposit money into the unfortunate woman's account. And a few days later, the same 500-1000 rubles that the woman transferred by mistake are written off from their accounts. Having received your transfer, the fraudster wrote a claim for a refund, and the operator wrote it off from your account.

If you receive a call with the same story, tell your interlocutor that the money can be returned by writing a claim in the place where the account was replenished. In addition, you can check the interlocutor by asking him to dictate his number, to which the money was originally supposed to go. In theory it should be similar to yours. Call this number. If at the other end of the line they have no idea about the villager or about the erroneous transfer of funds, you will be convinced that scammers were trying to scam you.

The call is dropped

Another unobvious, but growing fraudulent scheme: attackers make short calls to mobile numbers, a person sees a missed call, calls back, listens to a long advertisement, after which the call is dropped. And then it turns out that a significant amount of money has been debited from his account for this call. By the way, the same situation can happen not only with missed calls, but also with messages, for example, that money has been debited from the subscriber’s account, and in order to return it, you must immediately call back or send an SMS to the specified number.

If you receive an SMS about debiting funds from a bank card, first of all contact the bank whose client you are and check whether the information received in the message is true. In 99% of cases you will hear that these notifications have nothing to do with the credit institution.

The scheme is extremely simple: a person receives a call from an unfamiliar number and is asked a simple question: “Can you hear me?” In most cases, the person answers “yes,” and at this time the attacker records what was said and then uses voice confirmation in operations. The correspondent will tell you where and how you can use other people’s voices Olga Matveeva.

“Hello, hello, can you hear me okay?” - “Hello, yes!” And then - short beeps. Such a conversation can have serious consequences for the subscriber. Most likely, in a couple of hours the scammers will call the person back and demand money. The attackers will threaten that they will allegedly connect you to an expensive mobile service or completely withdraw all your savings from your accounts. A written “yes” will serve as confirmation at the bank. In most cases, scammers are simply trying to intimidate the victim. Lead Analyst, Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin assures that Russian banks have a reliable security system; they will not transfer or withdraw money simply by voice on the phone:

“Today there is a two-level authorization - when you call your bank, several things are checked: the phone number from which you are calling and the code word. Therefore, even knowing the code word, but without a phone number, it is impossible to withdraw money. “Scam "very old. It just changed. People still fall for it. As long as people get scared and pay, it will work."

Another well-known way to lure money is a fake call from a bank. True, people are called not by the scammers themselves, but by robots they have programmed, which ask for data, logins, passwords and PIN codes. Voice programs ask for information “to clarify information” or “due to a system failure.” Scammers may also claim that your card is blocked when trying to transfer money. To unlock it, you supposedly need to contact the support service at the specified phone number. However, Russians quickly learned to ignore such calls, and robotic thefts began to decline. Former head of the criminal police, lawyer Evgeny Kharlamov says that the risk group for such fraudulent schemes are teenagers and pensioners. Some people are poorly versed in the rules of service, others can take our word for it:

“The scammers are counting on the fact that citizens will be ready to give at least some money so that they stop there, don’t touch their accounts and don’t call again. Of course, the risk group is pensioners, elderly people, they grew up in the Soviet Union and beyond "Everyone accepts it at face value. The state must carry out prevention; citizens must be explained what to do if an attacker calls. And, of course, they need to call the police and report this fact."

Another assistant for scammers is a mobile phone with a voice command. If the gadget suddenly ends up in the hands of a swindler, then all he needs to do is enter a certain sequence of commands to transfer money from an account linked to a phone number through the Mobile Banking electronic application. The entire operation will take about 2 minutes. Head of the movement "No Fraud in the Russian Federation" Vladimir Demikhov explains: in order to reduce the risk of fraud, banks have introduced restrictions on the maximum transfer amount via SMS - up to 1,500 thousand rubles per day:

“With the help of different sets of words - “yes”, “no” - you can create a structure, process it through different programs, develop intonation, pronunciation and compose words and phrases based on them.”

Lawyers also warn that you should not provide personal information over the phone. Always say that you prefer to drive to the office and speak with the official in person.

The sanctions for fraudsters for such crimes are quite serious. If the swindler is caught, he will be tried under the article “Extortion”, the punishment is imprisonment for a term of 7 to 15 years with a fine of up to a million rubles.

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