For several months now I have been receiving telephone calls from ‘Accident Insurance Company’; evidently some overseas call centre as all callers, male and female, have an Indian type of accent. My number is unlisted and I never give it to anybody; it was also a brand new, never before used, number when I received it three years ago. I always say that I am angry that I keep getting calls from them, I have not been in an accident, haven’t witnessed an accident, nor have any family members been in an accident either and they promise that my number will be deleted but the calls keep on coming. I am intrigued as to what this is all about and assume that people who have been in accidents are getting sucked in to some sort of scam. Does anybody know what’s behind this?
When you have an almost limitless supply of people and automated dialers that do a reasonable job of only connecting people to people (ie detecting unused numbers, disconnected numbers, engaged numbers, answering machines, etc) then you can just call sequential ranges and hit everyone, new number/unlisted number or otherwise … In the old days we called them ‘war dialers’ …
Does any of this sound familiar?
http://www.scamnet.wa.gov.au/scamnet/Scam_Types-Phone_Scams-Car_Crash_Compensation_Phone_Scam.htm
Rule of thumb: unless you are expecting a call, hang up. If you are expecting one, make sure you know/have/require the reference number for the transaction/claim. If in doubt or really suspicious, ask them their name/consultant ID and call them back on the number they advertise in white pages …
If you are on the Do not call register (and if you aren’t get on it immediately!) then with the exception of the charities etc that are allowed to call, and organisations/companies that you have an existing business relationship with such as your bank or ISP etc, pretty much 100% of calls like this are scams. One giveaway is that there will be a delay after you answer the phone before someone speaks to you. This is because the automated dialers connect to someone in the call centre after you’ve answered the phone. Just hang up then. Even so, we still pretty much screen all of our calls
Thank you for the info - in future I’ll do as you suggest and just hang up during the short delay period when nobody appears to be on the line.
Its a scam and yes I get them too periodically in spite of having a silent phone number. They dial numbers at random from a computer.
Its the way of the world: the poor trying to get to get at the richer countries.They may succeed sometimes --its a game of averages.
We just need to be informed and educated and don’t engage with these dubious phone calls
I get the Microsoft one occasionally:
This is Microsoft Centre, you have a virus on your PC
Oh, really can you help me get rid of it?
Yes, are you in front of your computer?
Hang on while I turn it on.
Puts phone down and goes to watch the TV. I don’t know how long they wait, but it might slow them down a wee bit. Probably not as much as I hope!
Mmm, I think I’ll have to come up with something similar then because it probably ties up one of their phone lines for a while, eh?
