Scams- more going round?

[Yamayo]

Apparently there has been mention of the HMRC one- you know the one where an automated voice tells you HMRC is sending the police to arrest you if you don't pay them straight away?
If you hang up without pressing 1 rhe warrant will be issued etc

I had a rather elaborate one this afternoon from a Barclays certified number. They asked me to go home and log on online to verify fraudulent transactions on my account, which were present.
This led to having to upgrade security on my account, as 'there have been lots of fraud reported to Barclays recently' (their words).
Then the kicker is to reset the account I have to transfer money to the local branch manager's personal account (the safest one, apparently 🤔) while they verified my details and authorised the rest of the funds to go on my new (imaginary) account.

It sounds ridiculous on paper, but coming from a certified number it was almost convincing. They were very sweet and apologetic and nice about it too. 😆

I've now resorted to having the landline phone on silent. We were getting scanners ringing at 4am and then 7am 2 days in a row. Even now 8 months later we get at least 2 a day. Only way we know it's scammers other than googling their numbers is that they never leave a message on the answering machine. Only other people that have the landline number are schools, GP and hospital. All our friends and family ring our mobiles. We are registered with tps and ex directory which is only relevant to UK numbers . The calls we get are international starting with 00 .Hate these bastards, they make you feel like a prisoner in your own home with the constant ringing 😤

I had the HMRC one the other day. It was to my work phone which I never use to input into websites etc, so they’re clearly just ringing random numbers. You should never ‘press 1’ incase that transfers you to a premium number. They could also put your number on a list of numbers that engage with spammers so that you get more calls.

They’re also becoming more sophisticated in that they can mirror real numbers. DH’s company is having terrible trouble with this as the scammers are able to make it look like they’re calling from the real head office number. One client was savvy and asked the scammers for DH’s name (to prove they were really from the company) and they knew it! The irony being that it’s such a large company and they’ve been working remotely for so long now that a real telephone operative probably wouldn’t know DH’s name 😂.

A recent one is emails asking to share stuff via One Drive and you are asked to put in your details to login.

When I answer the phone I give the caller one second to speak before I hang up.Scammers are usually ringing many lines at once so it takes a few moments before they can respond. I have hung up on my daughter in law, she rang again apologising for her poor reception on her phone.

The Barclays one came on my mobile from a certified Barclays number, they also knew my address and I am pretty sure (first call i was out so couldn't hear very well) they also knew my account number.
All very convincing for a long time.