Scam call offering me a 30 percent discount

[ANPARKER]

Today I received a call on purportedly 020 4538 9426 from purportedly John purportedly from EE. He asked how I was today and if I wanted a 30 percent discount. The man was speaking with a South Asian accent in what sounded like a call centre.

He asked me to tell him how much I was paying each month so that I could identify myself. I declined and as he was working for EE asked him to tell me how much I was paying. He said that he needed to know to take me through security.

I declined again and he rang off.

I subsequently called 150 and reported this incident to EE. The guy I spoke to confirmed that EE had not contacted me today and that the call was a scam.

I am publishing this to the community so that other are aware of this scam.

[Peter_W]

Hi @doug78, thanks for taking the time to flag these!

You're absolutely right that none of these are genuine numbers we would call from, and you definitely made the right call in treating them with caution.

The best way to get these flagged with our security team is definitely to fill out the form above that @XRaySpeX shared, as this will directly log each example with them for further investigation.

Peter

[doug78]

Hello Peter,

Thanks for your advice.

I thought it might not so I sent the numbers to 7726 (one by one) and got a reply "Thank you for your report"

Is there any advantage in using the form instead of 7726?

I have now also filled in the form you referred to but had a problem with the comment box. "Not a valid comment" so I deleted most of what I had written and it was then accepted.

What worries me is that I had 4 calls this morning, all of whom know I have an account with EE and also knew my number.

How could this have happened if their information didn't originate from EE ?

A data leak perhaps?

Kind regards

Doug

[Peter_W]

Thanks for giving that a try @doug78.

We still use 7726 as an option to report spam, but this is more for messages rather than calls. 

When it comes to scammers, these largely use a process of targeting as many people as possible with the hope that some of the attempts will be successful. 

I'm on EE but occasionally will get similar calls claiming to be from a different network.

It's not possible to say for sure how they obtained your number, but it won't have been anything from us. 

Peter

[doug78]

Thanks Peter, all understood.

What surprised me was getting 4 similar phone calls within an hour, all claiming to be from EE.

I now see that mobile number allocations are published and that 07811 numbers belong to EE.

Hence these people know your provider, in most cases, just from your number.

Presumably they were all in the same call centre at the other side of the world.

Yes, they could well be randomly dialling numbers but looks like it was being coordinated.

Also, I read on the Ofcom website that spoofing a UK number from abroad was banned in January this year and providers are now required to block such calls. I guess there will be a lag between finding  such cases and blocking them.

Kind regards

Doug