Some Fake Phone Call Scams
Recently there's quite a number of fake phone call scams around to try accumulate personal particulars and build a database to sell in the market. The market here refers to those who may be in the self-employed industries or some outsource telemarketeers, needing a pool of clientèle base to promote their products and services. Or to become worse, they can use the Database to do other things online which is too wide to be thought of.
Below is a true story of my friend's wife experience. The victim is her colleague working in the same company.
My friend's wife works in the bank. Just about 2 weeks ago, her colleague received a call out of nowhere through an office phone. The caller called to inform the colleague (the victim) that
"This is calling from the subordinate court and is calling to suspect that you are involved with a serious accidental case, but to double confirm that you are the person involving the case, give me your Name and Identity Number"
The way they ask is a kind of technique they use to ask for particulars such that they dun ask, but instead they request or order to provide them with the details accordingly.
It is also psychology kind of scenario which involves you to a serious case and such that you might be afraid and try "not get involved" so they can get the particulars easily to verify the person.
Everything in the plot seems quite perfect until the caller only speaks in Chinese...
Should the caller speaks in fluent English, the plot will be quite successful and hard to differentiate if its genuine.
The victim just simply gave out the particulars to the caller without verifying and the caller just said, "Ok, we've got the wrong person" and they just hanged up.
My friend's wife overheard the conversation halfway when she noticed her colleague was giving her personal particulars and tried to stop her colleague from giving, but it was just too late. After a while of getting hold of what's going on the phone call, my friend's wife suggested to make a police report about this.
So when the victim made a police report, to her surprise, she was the 6th victim to have made the report for similar case recently.
This seems to be the latest call trap.
My friend's wife and victim then find out more details of the different persons who encounter similar scenarios. The caller uses similar technique as mentioned above to other people.
Some are smart enough to respond that she don't understand chinese and ask if they can speak English. The caller will say they can't hear you properly as an excuse for several times after which you may have repeatedly requested them to speak English, they'll hanged up the call immediately.
Some asked for the caller's supervisor name who is in charge to verify if the call is genuine, the caller will also immediately hanged up.
As for now they only ask for Name and Identity Number, and which Identity Number basically cant do much for now unless they go borrow money from Loan Shark.
But as technology advances, who knows the Identity Number may be of useful in the future to do more convenient transactions?
Personal Particulars are meant to be kept as Personal, Private and Confidential. Should anyone calls for your particulars, do verify again and again. Just be extra Careful and make an effort to verify before giving away Personal Particulars.
