How Phone Scams Work

Unwanted calls, many of them scams, have been multiplying in the past few years. In recent years, residents have gotten an average of about 17 robo-calls per month, though some households receive up to a half dozen a day.

Recently, a Nextdoor member posted, “I just received a phone message telling me that my Social Security account, number and benefits have just been suspended and that I need to call a phone number immediately. This was the first time I’ve gotten this call.”

This new Social Security scam is like the IRS agent scam, which threatens federal prison for tax evasion. It instructs the victim to go to WalMart, buy a money order to pay off penalties.

Robo-calls are generally easy to identify. Generally, when these calls start, the victim hears a dead line as the robo-call person hasn’t caught up with the computer that made the call. The tip off is when the caller comes on the line. A specific noise can be heard, best described as a burp, the sound the machine makes when putting the caller on the line. The caller has a screen that gives the full name and street address of the person being called. This information can be obtained from buying call lists from vendors. Thus the caller will often say, “is this Mitch Mitchell?” An appropriate response would be to hang up. Some like to ask, “who’s calling?”

This is where it gets tricky. “Can you hear me okay?” asks the caller. Mitch now has a choice. Seems innocent enough. Why not say “yes”? Problem is, the “yes” is being recorded to indicate that assent had been given to whatever pitch had been given by the vendor. Instead, the answer “no” would be appropriate, but hanging up would still be the best move.

Calls from the “local handyman,” the home center or the home improvement verification center or some such, which are designed to simply drum up business. “Hi, I’m Roy. I spoke with your wife (he or she always knows her full name) about home improvement a year ago and she suggested I call back in a year.” They are counting on the reality you or your spouse won’t remember everyone he, she or you spoke with during the past year.

Then comes then clincher. “I remember she was very nice to me.” That part is the key, the theory being Mitch is not likely to hang up or be mean to a person who has called him or his family member very nice. “So I thought I’d call back to find out if you’re still interested.” Truth be told, it’s more like “I thought I’d call back to see if you’re a sucker.”

Calls from “Microsoft care” trick users into giving control of their computer to the caller. Then they demand several hundred dollars to give up control. This scammer told Mitch to get on his computer, depress the Windows key to the right of the control key, hit R, type in “eventvwr” (event viewer), then asks, “What do you see? See all the error messages? These messages are slowing down your computer.” In fact, they record past keystrokes, having no effect on the computer operation. The scammer then instructs the victim to type in www.teamviewer.com. The “join remote control session” prompt produces a pop-up with a nine digit ID number and a four digit password. This is the moment of truth most people should avoid. The scammer needs the number. Once given, he or she has control. Best to hang up before any of this happens.

The grandpa scam caller claims to be a grandson in a Las Vegas jail or some other city and needs bail money. “My lawyer will call you in a few minutes. Please do what he says.” Often, the lawyer and the grandson are the same caller. Send the amount by way of a Walmart gift card. One grandpa scam recipient replied, “I have many grandsons, which one are you?” No answer, hangs up.

Another category tricks the phone user into calling an expensive area code by ringing a phone once or twice, hoping no one will answer. When the recipient sees the incomplete call, the victim might return the call. If it’s a 809 area code, which is the Dominican Republic, long distance fees are up to $35 for the first minute.

In 2017, around 2.7 percent of all calls in the U.S. were scam calls. By 2018, scam calls were 26 percent of all calls in the U.S., over 60 billion such calls in a year, up from about 30 billion in 2017. By the end of 2019, 44.6 percent of phone calls in the U.S. are expected to be scam calls. Americans lost nearly $9 billion from phone scams in 2018, about one in 10 US residents losing money from a phone scam.

steve@beachcomber.news