#thisisnottelstra
#roboscam
#justhanguppressnothing
Encountered a new flavour of possibly a number of different scams whilst working in the home office today.
Incoming phone call. Interstate number, possibly Western Australia, South Australia or Northern Territory by the area code. Have had scam calls before where they have spoofed such domestic numbers.
I answered, "Morning." Nothing committal nor identifying about that answer.
A few seconds pass - usually indicating the call is from someone of non-English-speaking background, or from a call centre that uses automated dialing.
Tick to automated dialing, but also an automated voice recording system. I can't recall the exact words but the script was almost the same as with the human operator ones that call from India/Pakistan, pretend that they are in Melbourne and that they are calling from your telco or Microsoft.
"This is a call from Telstra. We have detected suspicious and possibly illegal activity on your IP address which is compromising your service agreements. Your service will be terminated in one-hour if this is not rectified.
"Press 1 if you would like to...."
I hung up. Pressing numbers might provide some automated way of giving them control over my Internet service - so not doing that. I expect that if I had stayed on the line and interacted with the scam, that it probably would have ended up in a remote-access scam masquerading as some company providing fake virus removal services for me.
If you get one of these calls, steer clear of it - it is not Telstra, nor Microsoft, nor any other legitimate company. Don't speak. Don't press any digits. Just hang up.
