BT TELEPHONE CALL THREAT

Keep receiving telephone calls from It is claimed 'BT technical department'
Stating BT are cutting off my Internet connection.
To avoid this " Press One" on telephone.

Have been getting these calls for several weeks.
Interested to hear if others are receiving similar calls.
And if there is, a way of having them stopped.

These calls are NOT from �BT� they are a scam, trying to get access to your computer.

No not answer, or just hang up.

In terms of stopping these calls, a call blocker service works, but can cost a little.

Every so often I press 1 and then put the handset down on the table. I once heard the person on the other end who eventually picked the call up having a rant about people wasting his time by no longer being there.

It was quite amusing listening to him getting irate about me wasting his time! . His language was horrendous I had never heard that many Anglo-Saxon expressions in an Indian accent before! Surprised he didn't revery to Hindi/Urdu etc.

I used to pass them onto my 3 yr old and take bets on how long they'd last, but they seem to swear a lot more now so have stopped.

In reply to a post by adrenalize_:

I used to pass them onto my 3 yr old and take bets on how long they'd last, but they seem to swear a lot more now so have stopped.

Three year olds swearing - that's awful (joke). My wife got a call from an Unknown a couple of years ago and she was asked to say something dirty: her immediate response was 'mucky wellingtons'. The caller ended the call.

I am fortunate to have a Fritz!Box and I route all calls from unknowns etc to one of the 5 built in answerphones. The phone doesn't even ring. A genuine caller will leave a message.

If you are a BT home phone user then BT Call Protect is free to setup.

BT Call Protect

If you have a BT line do BT receive any money for connecting the call?

NEVER press 1 or follow any similar instruction. You may be connecting yourself to a premium rate number at an extortionate rate. At best you are confirming that you are an obedient subscriber ripe for a scam.

Best advice is to say nothing, do nothing, and hang up.

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

NEVER press 1 or follow any similar instruction. You may be connecting yourself to a premium rate number at an extortionate rate.

Not possible. Whilst reverse charge call services exist, you will be clearly informed of the cost of the call prior to accepting it.

Edited by Oliver341 (Wed 20-Mar-19 15:23:43)

They enjoy BBC Radio 4, or I practice my Russian or Italian if I'm feeling frisky. Then block the number on BT Call Protect, not that that slows them down as they use spoofed numbers. Also get the same calls on mobiles.

That is not correct. It is the same as press 1 for x 2 for y etc, it does NOT make a new call.

I have call protect and all these numbers are spoofed. OFCOM are trying to work on cutting them out via the transit ( Practically always VOIP) networks that are allowing spoofed numbers. They are starting to fine them for not passing the correct CLI / Call type etc and have even threatened to bar some operators from providing service.

The Termination charge is so low as to be close to cost some were even set at 0 at one point. This may change with Originating calls dropping steeply as you cannot lose the cost of the call control in the orig cost if there aren't many.

questioning their chances of re-incarnation as something unpleasant sometimes results in a welcome personal follow up call, another chance to discuss their family relationships.

I'm sure you are right. Many if not most victims in these scams are from an older and more trusting generation and have no more technical knowledge than I have.

At best you are confirming that you are an obedient subscriber ripe for a scam.

The current education campaign aims to avoid any interaction whatever between potential victim and the scammer. Such interaction may give the scammer the opening he needs so surely it's better to cut him dead?

Edited by Malwaremike (Wed 20-Mar-19 17:21:48)

In reply to a post by kitcat:

The Termination charge is so low as to be close to cost some were even set at 0 at one point. This may change with Originating calls dropping steeply as you cannot lose the cost of the call control in the orig cost if there aren't many.

Would you care to expand that. I don't understand the point that you are making. I would be interested to know what revenue BT receives for terminating these calls.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

If you are a BT home phone user then BT Call Protect is free to setup

But doesn't prevent them . Had 4 in 24 hours 2 weeks ago. I do press '1' & string them along but more often than not the line goes dead after I wait to hear from them.

Yeah, I try to waste the time of any of these scammers too.

So does my father; he's in his 70s and (if a call arrives when he's bored) does a very good impression of a bewildered, slightly lonely old man when the callers from "Microsoft" call to help him with his slow computer.
Which, of course, is very slow, takes 5 minutes to start up, oh, what's the password... okay, it's loading, etc... oh, wait no the battery just ran out and it's turned off, hold on whilst I go and find the charger...

He knows to stop the call just as they're asking him to download their software or go to a particular website, but getting to that point in the first place has usually taken the scammer 10-15 minutes. They don't like it when they realise they've been 'had', and he has had great fun winding them up about it. I'm sure that if enough people do this it'll become much less profitable.

Judging by the number of threads across t'internet of late there has been a major increase in these calls. Not just BT, but TalkTalk and Virgin as well. We use call screening on answerphone for all incoming calls which don't display a number known to us.

Sorry I missed this when you posted it.

The money BT gets for terminating calls is extremely low, some call types were set at 0p a couple of years ago, most are in the 0.03ppm area.

OFCOM decided that the cost of calls was all in the originating leg and that terminating was very low as you had to have all the equipment to make calls. This is a primary reason for the nuisance calls we all get, especially those from overseas IP operators who work under a different regulatory regime.

You can find costs in the BT wholesale price list but need to register. The 2016 input to an OFCOM review quotes 1/30ppm in para 21 and 22.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0034...

I had 3 in the space of half an hour last week, just ignored the 3rd.

Thank you. I do think more effort by the telephone companies could be put into blocking these calls. Clearly they would not lose much revenue.

Michael

Difficulty is identifying them. The CLI is continually changed so it is not possible to identify by CLI and the call type is lied about by the originating operator. So calls originated abroad do not show as International in the signalling message.

OFCOM are recently suggesting that for calls in the VOIP space they will expect operators to check that the originating range is valid and will allow operators to 'drop' calls that have CLIs within ranges that have not been allocated by OFCOM.

They have also threatened to fine operators that have control of number ranges where these are being used to originate these calls, unless they cut the offending customer off. This cannot affect those originated abroad where most originate.

The only way to cut down on calls from abroad is to enforce the correct signalling parameters on the transit operators and start to fine those that do not provide the international type when calls are coming from abroad. If this happens and you have barred international calls on your call barring device this would reduce the calls to a small number. However this is quite difficult to do on VOIP calls as where they originate is not always clear. ( Think VPNs)

Thank you. I am glad to learn that something is being done and I except that it is not easy.

If I'm speaking to a real person, I find that telling them they have a sexy voice and demand to know what type and colour underwear they have on gets rid of them pretty quick.

Have a look on YouTube there is a whole genre of channels where they bait the scammers on a scratch VM (though personally I would be tempted to use an old laptop I could quickly reimage as you can detect VM's). The best ones leave tempting "documents" for the scammers to look at, that can result in whole call centres being wiped

I said to BT The exact same thing a while back.

TBH, I think each operator should have a set amount of numbers allocated to them to hand out to their users, transferred BT numbers etc should be assigned to the operator they are currently using.

And if a number used does not originate from their operator that call gets blocked.

Also if that operator refuses to follow the rules, block them for a set time until they do and so on.

Paul

Michael ( Paulkirby and Ignitionet may also be interested)

OFCOM have today issued 3 consultations several of which cover issues raised in this thread.

1. About trust in Telephone numbers( Covers CLI authentication etc)

2.On Porting and the future allocation of Numbers

3. Future interconnection and Call termination( Cover costs of Fixed line termination we have been talking about)

Much too much reading to do!

Those 3 links for me displays the same bit of information apart from an extra couple of paragraphs and a different title.

Paul

Each link lets you download a different part of the consultation.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

Each link lets you download a different part of the consultation.

Ohhhh.
My bad LOL

Paul

Paul

That's what I originally thought until I looked at the downloaded info. They all looked very similar on the web but the documents are clearly different.

Thank you for the links. I am glad to see that the matter is being addressed

Oh wow its loads of pages to read LOL

Paul

Paul

I don't expect many people outside industry will read them in depth. But many sections are just generic OFCOM speak and can be skimmed over.

The way some things are done has possibilities to affect nuisance call volumes but only if ALL calls are verified so International incoming calls also need to be checked against any database for spoofed CLI AND missing international markers. My opinion is that a missing international call marker means the call should be binned as it bypasses call filters that bar international calls. But the marker could just be added instead. This may cause me to actually respond personally ( although I don't believe that anyone outside industry is taken any notice of by OFCOM).

I route my DECT phones through a router that has 5 built in answering machines and call diversion. It is a simple matter to route calls from Unknowns; international numbers etc to an answerphone. The phone doesn't ring in these circumstances but I do get an email message that a call has come through. If the caller is genuine, then they will leave a message.

Then as our Australian cousins would say "there is always Lenny".

Yeah, like I said a little while back the only way to stop the spoofing numbers would be to allocated blocks to providers and if a phone number doesn't match a block of number for that provider then its spoofed and flag it as spoofed and block.

I was telling BT this a while back.

So at least it would be a step in the right direction.

Paul

If the number needs to match the provider how does this work for number porting?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If the number needs to match the provider how does this work for number porting?

That's easy, that number being ported gets added to their providers block of numbers.

I said this in my older post in this topic.

Paul

And if it is International, when none of the numbers calling will be UK ones?

Ah - in my mind block was contiguous blocks rather than individual ones.

Though this was meant to be part of a £700k blockchain investigation/study

Mr Saffron

Most of this is in one of the consultations. Only International part is acknowledged as missing.

I don't understand how blockchain tech is going to help with the millions of porting numbers ( low but still millions) that move each year. The transactional cost of dealing with these using block chain is likely to be too high. Only if you can limit the number of machines dealing with the block chain does it begin to make sense, there are too many operators to update a minimum of two machines for every operator to validate every transaction. Simple central database with updates to child databases for each operator is much simpler to run authenticate etc. Blockchain is just 'flavour of the month' for every inventory issue at present.