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These phishing scams have been well reported, and people are becoming suspicious. That being the case, the phishing scam isn’t as productive as it used to be. Clever criminals have now decided to take the crime one step further. They still send out e-mail messages, but knowing that people won’t necessarily log on to some site to provide personal information, they instead ask the victims to call a particular phone number to confirm their information.
These phone numbers are fake and are often created using Internet-based phone accounts. The victim calls the number and gets a recording that asks them to enter their credit card number. They do so, they get a “Thank you” and that is that. In some cases, these crooks actually follow up by making phone calls themselves while posing as an employee of a bank or lending institution. The victims often fall for these scams as their Caller ID boxes display the name and number of their bank. It must be legitimate if the Caller ID says so, right? No. It isn’t difficult to make any number appear to be any other number on a Caller ID display; it just takes some easy-to-obtain software.
Remember - your bank, or any other company with which you do business, will never ask you for your account number, user name, password, or credit card number, either by e-mail or by telephone. They don’t need to ask you for that information, they already have it. The only people who want that information from you are people that want to do you harm. If your bank calls you and you aren’t sure it’s really them, hang up and call the number for the bank that’s in the phone book. That way you can be certain that you are really talking to the bank.
And be careful. These people get more clever by the day.
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