Vocal Voices

The latest media campaign sob-stories are about 'victims' losing an average of £13,000 to bank scammers.

I sit dumbfounded as I listen to the tales of people freely giving out PIN, sort codes and account numbers, card details. passwords...... They then have the gall to blame the banks for what happened and to denounce them for not making good their loses.

If they were all old, infirm or poorly educated I might have some sympathy, but they are not. Many are not into middle-age, some have young families, and more than a few live in nice houses. What they do have in common is that they all took the carrot.....usually "money for nothing and the kicks for free". © Dire Straits.

Yes, I'm beginning to think that perhaps the banks do have a point in not making good losses where folk have [been duped into] "authorizing the transfer".

But I would also like to see a rethink on banks telephoning or emailing people for marketing purposes (ban it), and also possibly when they suspect fraud on an account. What they should do in the latter case is immediately freeze the account, and invite the customer to go into the bank branch to sort matters out.

It is also very easy when you are in the furore of an unexpected telephone call to give out information unwittingly. It might be a fraudster, it might be a genuine bank employee, who knows.

Twice in recent years we have been contacted by the fraud department of a high street bank over suspicious entries on an account, and twice by a bank's marketing manager - in each case, the call was genuine. Nowadays, however, I think I would hang up on ANY caller purporting to be from a bank, and I would then go into the branch the next day to see what's what .....

I am not even the slightest surprised. I had a flaming row with my daughter a few years back when I told her she'd been scammed on ebay and she kept telling me that it WAS from ebay and I didn't know what I was talking about. Yelling at me actually.

In the end I told her to go check her bank account and put the phone down.

She called me back about 2 hours later telling me she was sorry and that three attempts had been made to remove cash from her account. Only unsuccessful because there was no cash there.

If my daughter, knowing who and what I am, can adamantly tell me I'm an idiot for telling her she's been scammed then I'll believe absolutely anything about anyone who is scammed.....

Fortunately I find we have a very careful and cautious bunch here on VV. Mainly because we, as a group, self support on do's and don'ts....

I had a safety and security training session yesterday at work. During that session we had a recorded call from someone claiming to work for Microsoft who claimed that their (Microsoft's), servers were reporting that his (our employee's), computer was infected with malware. They guy was no dummy but was completely unprepared for what he was being told. He asked several of the right questions and then said, "it's 5pm here in Europe and I'm going home".

The call was cringeworthy. Even listening with half an ear you could hear the guy was not a professional in any way. He kept getting things wrong and he kept saying the wrong things. He even said "I'm sitting here in California USA at Microsoft's headquarters". OK I know that most people won't have a clue that Microsoft's headquarters is in Seattle Washington State, but it is a clear indication of all the wrong things they were saying.

But, work was receiving 800 of these calls a day and it was clear that someone was reviewing all the tapes of the conversations and having after call training sessions to make them better. We know this because the same voice became more confident, gave more correct information and was more likely to get further with the person on the other end of the phone.

OK so let's put that aside. Let's subject the above to a simple logical analysis.

First statement.

I'm from Microsoft and our systems are reporting that your computer is infected.

Ho Ho Ho. At this point the first answer is "go away and bother someone else IDIOT". Why is that the answer? Why was this very first statement wrong?

OK let's analyse it.

First thing. Did you authorise Microsoft to monitor your computer and did you give them your phone number?
No and No.

OK then, let's assume you are one of the few million who have bought and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. Do you honestly believe that if MSE had reported to Microsoft that you were infected, that Microsoft would get an expensive US resource on the phone to talk to you and fix your problem?

Second thing. There are approximately 2 billion personal computers in the world. More than 1 billion of them run Microsoft Windows.

So Microsoft is supposedly actively monitoring more than 1 Billion computers and phoning their owners up (god knows where they got the phone number from), to help them fix it from the goodness of their heart???

Simply put the very first words out of the persons mouth did not pass the credulity test. So why bother going further. F.U.V.M and put the phone down.

Yet people actually talk to them, allow them to spin their spiel, confuse them and, eventually, let them install software on their machines which then attacks it and demands money to recover it.

It's not worth thinking about.