Phony Phone Scam

Published: 2010-05-15. Last Updated: 2010-05-15 02:36:11 UTC
by Deborah Hale (Version: 1)

The FBI and their partner organizations have issued a warning to consumers in the US that a new phone scam has appeared. This scam is basically a telephone denial of service attack that is being used to distract the receiver of the calls from a much more important problem. The article states:

"The scheme is known as telephony denial-of–service (TDOS) and according to several telecommunications companies working with the FBI, there has been a recent surge of these attacks in the past few weeks. The perpetrators are suspected of using automated dialing programs and multiple accounts to overwhelm the land and cell phone lines of their victims with thousands of calls.

When the calls are answered, the victim may hear anything from dead air (nothing on the other end), an innocuous recorded message, an advertisement, or even a telephone sex menu! The calls are typically short in duration but so numerous that victims have had to have their numbers changed to make the calls stop.

The FBI has determined that these calls serve as a diversionary technique. During these TDOS attacks, online trading and other money management accounts are being accessed by the perpetrators who are transferring funds out of those accounts. The perpetrators will obtain account information of their victims in some way and then contact the financial institutions to change their victims’ profile information such as email addresses, telephone numbers and bank account numbers.

The purpose of the malicious phone calls is to occupy the victim phone numbers on record with the financial institutions managing the accounts so that when the institutions contact the victim to verify the changes and transactions, the institution is unable to reach the victim. Consequently, the victim has no idea what has really transpired until it’s too late."

You can see the full article at the NJToday website.

njtoday.net/2010/05/12/phony-phone-calls-distract-consumers-from-genuine-theft-%E2%80%94-fbi-partners-warn-public/

The article warns the receiver of any of these types of calls to be hyper vigilant and keep an eye on all of your personal finances, accounts and make sure that you take advantage of the right to your free credit report annually. All of us should take this advice to heart whether or not you are receiving these harassing calls.

Deb Hale Long Lines, LLC

Keywords: telephone scam

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Phony Phone Scam

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