10 Russia-Ukraine war scams hitting you via email, phone, and social media

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is nearly 6,000 miles from our border, but it’s likely already affecting you here at home.

You probably see a hit to your 401(k) and financial portfolio. As those go down, gas prices are going up. Tap or click here for simple ways to find the best gas prices in your area.

Whenever there’s an event of mass impact, hackers, scammers, and thieves take advantage of the situation.

Note that scammers will contact you via calls, text, email, or social media. If you have anyone older in your family, they are very susceptible to falling for these scams. Share this post with them on your social media or email this post with a link.

Here’s a list of scams we can expect to see as the Russia-Ukraine war heats up…

Like the Whac-A-Mole game at the carnival, every time state and federal law enforcement officials think they have smacked down scam robocalls, the unwanted calls pop up in a slightly different place with a slightly different face.

One new trick is for callers to send messages straight to voicemail. The scammers argue that because they don’t cause phones to ring, they aren’t really calling at all.

They also may buy or hijack lists of real phone numbers to trick spam-blocking software into letting the calls through. Law enforcement officials have asked phone carriers to make it harder for scammers to obtain real numbers, but those lists are legally for sale by third-party data providers, and ferreting out who is buying them is difficult.

Earlier this month, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican, led all 51 attorneys general, including the District of Columbia’s, in a letter calling on the Federal Communications Commission to reduce unwanted robocallers’ access to real phone numbers.

“Robocallers have too many arrows in their quiver,” Stein said in a Stateline interview. “We have to do everything in our power to make sure they can’t pretend to be legitimate callers and trick people into picking up the phone.”

Scammers’ motivation is “to steal from vulnerable people, and they are so successful at it that they have great incentives to come up with technological workarounds every time we try to block them,” Stein said…

The Federal Communications Commission issued its largest ever fine of $225 million to Texas telemarketers who sent about 1 billion robocalls falsely claiming to sell health insurance for Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and other companies.

John Spiller and Jakob Mears, who did business under the names Rising Eagle and JSquared Telecom, faced the fine, proposed in June 2020 by the FCC, for massive spamming of spoofed robocalls in the U.S. in 2019. Spoofed calls have a false caller ID that makes them appear to come from a nearby location.

Consumers would be asked if they were interested in “affordable health insurance with benefits from a company you know?” and companies including Aetna, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and United HealthCare were mentioned.

If they pressed 3 to get an agent, the consumer would be transferred to a call center unaffiliated with any of those insurers. One of the robocallers’ largest clients, Health Advisors of America, was sued in 2019 by the the Missouri attorney general for telemarketing violations, the FCC says.

Spiller told the USTelecom Industry Traceback Group, a group authorized by the FCC to investigate robocalls, that he knowingly called consumers on the Do Not Call list, the FCC says. He told the group that his firm made millions of calls per day and that he was using spoofed numbers, the FCC said in its original fine proposal.

In addition to enforcing the agency’s largest-ever fine, the FCC also issued several cease-and-desist orders against other robocallers and created a robocall response team.

“Unwanted robocalls are not only a nuisance, but they also pose a serious risk to consumers who can inadvertently share sensitive, personal information in response to bad actors’ malicious schemes,” acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “I’m proud to unveil my first set of actions to put a renewed focus on what the FCC can do to combat the issue that we receive the most complaints about.

The cease-and-desist letters went to six firms charged with making or facilitating robocalls:

Is it safe to answer the phone? Short answer: No. It’s probably a robocall spammer.

Sometimes, they claim Social Security Administration or the Internal Revenue Service is on the line. (They aren’t; neither service will ever threaten you or demand immediate payment on the phone.) Or they call saying your car’s warranty is expiring and that your credit card interest rate could be lowered.

Three out of 4 Americans said they were targeted by phone scammers over the past year, finds a survey done for Hiya, which provides cloud-based phone call performance management services for companies including AT&T and Samsung.

The bombardment of robocalls, many of which come from scammers seeking to bilk you out of money, has led many to simply not answer their phone when the caller is unknown.

And for good reason. On average, those who fall for scam calls lose $182, with some losing more than $500, according to the survey of more than 2,000 consumers and 300 business professionals conducted Dec. 23-29, 2020, for Hiya by market research firm Censuswide.

The robocall and scam call deluge has led many to just avoid answering their phone – about 94% of those surveyed said they let unidentified incoming calls go unanswered. That comes at a time – during the coronavirus pandemic – when consumer and business use of voice calls nearly tripled, increasing 184%, says Hiya’s “State of the Call 2021” report.

Robocalls keep on coming

The robocall bonanza shows no signs of slowing. More than 4 billion robocalls targeted phones across the U.S. in January, a 3.7% increase over the month of December, according to YouMail, a company that provides anti-robocall services.

During January, robocalls averaged 129.5 million calls daily, according to YouMail’s Robocall Index, or about 1,500 calls each second.Get the Talking Tech newsletter in your inbox.

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Robocalls did decline in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the closing of some call centers, YouMail says in its report. The estimated 45.9 billion robocalls to consumers in 2020, however, was 50% more than in 2017, the company says.

But the robocall volumes “appear to be resuming their slow journey back toward their pre-pandemic levels,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici in the report.

During the coronavirus pandemic, new types of phone scams have arisen including those promising tests and cures, expedited stimulus payments and texts about COVID-19 support and pandemic tracing.

But many of the traditional scams remain tops and have more targets since many Americans are at home and using their smartphones as their main communications device for work and personal calls. https://e.infogram.com/5a3893ef-6c32-4392-a219-353f0dbb29e1?src=embed#async_embed

“The reality of it is the fraudsters are always changing tactics,” said Hiya president Kush Parikh. “They are always trying to figure how to pounce on whatever the latest trend is and obviously right now there’s fraud happening around vaccinations. There’s this cat-and-mouse game always happening.”

The harms of not answering

The amount of consumers not answering unidentified calls (94%) is significantly higher than a year ago (72%), Hiya found. It may seem counterintuitive, but that increased rate of unanswered calls can lead to more calls being initiated.

Businesses have expensive call centers, too, and when calls aren’t answered, “whether that’s customer service or sales … if people end up not answering those calls what do they end up doing? They call more,” Parikh said. “So legitimate businesses not just fraudsters are actually calling more because people are answering less.” 

Public health can be impacted, too, as COVID-19 vaccine scams have more than doubled since September, Hiya’s data finds. Scammers can take advantage of interest in getting vaccinated – and confusion about the vaccination process – to lure victims.

Hiya estimates it saved its corporate and consumer customers about $2.3 billion in 2020. But that doesn’t take into account the lost time that scam victims spend extricating themselves from scams. Add that in and the lost funds and productivity to scam calls likely surpassed $10 billion last year, Parikh said.

Regulators, wireless providers and security companies have focused on blocking robocalls. 

The Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission have fined phone companies allowing coronavirus-related robocall scams. The FTC has worked with the Justice Department to block illegal robocalls and the FCC is requiring phone companies to adopt new caller ID features by June 30, 2021. Those actions would combat “spoofing,” where a false caller ID makes a call appear to be coming from a nearby location.

September 12, 2019

A new report suggests that the United States’ top mobile carriers are making headway in the fight against annoying robocalls.

The data analytics company Transaction Network Services (TNS) released its bi-annual “Robocall Report” on Thursday, and some of the emerging unwanted call trends included an increase in hijacking mobile numbers and a shift to spoofing toll-free numbers.

However, the most promising news for consumers was that only 12% of high-risk calls received during the first six months of 2019 originated from numbers owned by AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon…

August 29, 2019

Your cellphone rings from a number you don’t recognize. Reluctantly, you pick it up and discover it’s an automated call from your credit card company, warning you that someone has fraudulently used your card to buy 10 plane tickets to Singapore. You won’t have to pay the charges. Whew!

Amid state and federal efforts to crack down on scam robocalls, legitimate robocallers worry that calls like this one will be blocked too.

Last week, attorneys general from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia announced a new agreement with telecom companies to crack down on illegal calls and scams. The U.S. House and Senate both have approved measures to curb the scam calls and are currently ironing out the differences between them, and the Federal Communications Commission is working on its own anti-scammer rules…

August 14, 2019

As the Federal Communications Commission wages war on robocalls, phone carriers are working together to ensure their customers are protected from scams.

AT&T and T-Mobile announced today calls across both networks would be verified, a step toward meeting the industry-wide SHAKEN/STIR standard.

SHAKEN/STIR verifies the authenticity of a call and alerts you if it is suspected as a spoof or scam. The call is verified at the network level and a symbol such as a check mark will appear to let you know if the call is not spoofed. With AT&T and T-Mobile, you will see “Call Verified” on your screen when you get a call.

July 9, 2019

LOS ANGELES—Your phone rings, and, for the third time today, you see a spam call is coming through. You send the call to voicemail and think, “Who is calling me?” 

Chances are, the call is coming from inside the United States. 

Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail robocall blocking app, estimates hundreds of millions of telemarketing and student loan scam calls originating from the U.S. The Federal Trade Commission cracked down on robocallers inside the country in June, taking 94 actions on a variety of scams. The majority of the callers were based in Florida and California and used robocalling technology to deploy interest rate reduction, weight loss and medical alert system scams. 

July 8,2019

The Federal Communications Commission is expanding its war on robocalls.

New rules, proposed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and expected to be voted on at the agency’s Aug. 1 meeting, would ban the use of fake numbers in international robocalls and text messages.

This “spoofing” technique uses a false caller ID, to make it appear as if the perpetrator is calling or texting from a nearby location, as a way to get recipients to answer or respond.

As regulators combat robocalls, more are coming from overseas, they say. In the first half of 2019, the FCC got more than 35,000 complaints about caller ID spoofing.

As part of the upcoming iOS 13 software update Apple revealed Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference, the company introduced new features that promise to block frequent scam and spam callers. Essentially, when this setting is turned on, only phone numbers that are recognized  (via your Contacts, Mail, and Messages) will ring the phone. All other calls are automatically dispatched to voicemail.

  The user will only be notified about the call if the caller leaves a voicemail. The recipient can then read Apple’s transcription of the voicemail and see if they want to call the number back…

Source:https://bit.ly/31s3AYw

That late-night telephone call you just got that amounted to one ring – don’t call back.

The Federal Communications Commission has issued an alert to consumers about a new wave of “One Ring” robocalls after “widespread overnight calling” in the states of New York and Arizona.

These recent “One Ring” calls attempt to bait consumers into calling the number back, which can result in you being billed toll charges as if you called a 900 number. The calls are also known as “Wangiri” – the term means “one ring and done” in Japanese, so labelled after the scam originated there years ago…

Source:https://bit.ly/2V5JO0G

In a few weeks, the dreaded tax season will be over. We loathe those oddly titled documents with the tiny print. We wonder what number – refund or remainder – those mysterious equations will spit out.

And as more of us sign up as part-time contractors, driving for Lyft and selling crafts on Etsy, our taxes get more complicated. We get anxious.

Criminals love to take advantage of that anxiety.

Tax scams and phishing operations are getting more sophisticated than ever. By faking ads, websites and caller IDs, scammers will gladly prey on your ignorance…

Source:https://bit.ly/2VxDEYn

As the war against robocalls wages on, the Federal Trade Commission claims to have won yet another victory against the illegal spammers. 

In a release this week, the agency touted that it shut down “four separate operations” that were responsible for “bombarding consumers nationwide with billions of unwanted and illegal robocalls.”

According to the FTC, the groups responsible pitched a wide array of services from auto warranties and debt-relief services to home security systems, fake charities and services meant to help improve Google search results. 

March 20, 2019

The fight against robocalls can even bring telecom rivals together.

AT&T and Comcast said Wednesday that they can authenticate calls made between the two different phone providers’ networks, a potential industry first and the latest in the long-running battle against spam calls. 

Using AT&T’s Phone digital home phone service and Comcast’s Xfinity Voice home phone service, the companies successfully tested the feature over regular consumer networks and not in a lab, the companies said…

Source:https://bit.ly/2IIZTaO

February 23, 2019

You’re in the shower. The phone rings. Your husband is out of town and you’ve been waiting for his call. You push through the curtain, your hair full of shampoo, you grab the phone and blurt out, “Hello?”

“Hello,” a voice answers, “this is Cindy with card services …”

You’re in the car. You’re on the way to the hospital. Your phone rings. You think it might be the doctor. You feel around, find the phone, hold it to your ear while keeping your eyes on the road. “Hello?” you say anxiously.

“Hi, this is Philip with an important message about your credit …”

November 15, 2018

Your cellphone rings. You don’t recognize the number on the screen, but the call appears to be coming from your area code – perhaps even your exchange. Maybe the display shows it’s coming from your town.

So you answer – and the unwanted recorded message begins.

A voice wants to sell you an extended warranty for your car, or a timeshare in a vacation spot, a loan to refinance your home.

It might even be a Chinese-language message about a purported package awaiting pickup at the local consulate…

July 6, 2018

Wondering whether you should pick up that random number that just called? 

Chances are, it’s a robocall, and it may be a scam. 

Robocalls have been on the rise in the United States: An estimated 4.1 billion robocalls were made nationwide in June alone, according to data compiled by YouMail, an app that aims to prevent robocalls by playing an out-of-service message from your phone. Since February this year, the number of robocalls made to phone users across the country has risen more than 40 percent, it says.

Most of the time, these robocalls are after people’s money. With the rapid improvement of phone caller ID – which, on most cellphones, can now warn you of an incoming potential scam call – and the proliferation of apps designed to screen for fake calls, the number of robocalls that actually get picked up on the first try is declining, according to YouMail CEO Alex Quilici… 

July 5, 2018

Scammers are flooding the United States with Chinese-language robocalls, causing major headaches from coast to coast.

These new robocalls are a lot like the ones you’ve already gotten on your phone at all hours of the day and night: Your phone rings, you pick up, and after a brief pause or maybe a quiet click or beep, a prerecorded voice message meets your ears. The recording, which often sounds like a young woman, usually delivers a message about lowering credit-card rates or buying into cheap health insurance…

March 23, 2018

The robocalls just keep coming.

But some new rules and initiatives may help the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission better combat them.

The FCC has approved a proposal to create a database of phone numbers that are reassigned — about 38 million are each year —  so the new owners of the numbers can avoid unwanted calls…

February 16, 2018

It all started simply enough just before dawn on July 8, 1937, when Mrs. Beard of Hampstead, England called police to report her husband was chasing a burglar around the neighborhood.

That phone call was the first in the world to take advantage of what was then a revolution in telecommunications — namely, a 911 emergency system…

July 14, 2017

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to rally industry to its side to prevent robocalls, especially those seeming to come from a local number.

Robocalls and unwanted telemarketing calls are the biggest consumer gripe hurled at the FCC, which gets about 200,000 complaints annually about them. Nearly 15 billion robocalls were made in the U.S. during the first half of 2017, according to YouMail, which provides anti-robocall services…

February 15, 2017

An IRS impersonation fraud that has victimized thousands of Americans leads a 2017 U.S. Senate ranking of the Top 10 scams targeting senior citizens.

Dubbed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration as the most pervasive impersonation fraud in IRS history, the swindle involves suspected scammers based in the U.S. and India who telephone Americans and threaten arrests unless purported tax debts aren’t paid immediately. At least 1.97 million people have been targeted, with as many as 200 victimized per week during the scam’s peak last year, according to the inspector general…

January 9, 2017

NASHVILLE — Bomb threats were reported Monday at Jewish community centers in at least nine states and the United Kingdom and federal agents have been standby in case of any problems, authorities said…