The phone is ringing... should I answer?

We all know the old long lost African relative, who've unfortunately recently died and left you thousanda/millions of pounds, scam. A grammatically faulty e-mail will notify you that all you need to do is send them a little money (5 000?) to get the inheritance out of bonds etc. easy-peasy :) 

And banks have warned us on multiple occasions that a genuine bank call will not need you to reveal either your PIN code or secret password... And still those phone calls are quite common and people fall for them :( Natwest is not helping the situation by actually asking your 1st, 5th and 6th letter of the password by phone when they call you for something... :S umm.. didn't you just say that you don't ask for passwords over the phone??!!! Do I have to tell you part of my password over the phone or not???!!!

Anyway a couple of months ago one of our neighbours came down to apologize for the wifi being slow... Our wifi had indeed been slow that day so Mr. Special said no worries mate, but try not to do it again :D later when we talked about it, I couldn't understand how he can affect our wifi :S We even had different providers... A little investigating and turns out he had received a phone call from Microsoft... okay... They said that he had accidentally downloaded some virus that now is affecting the whole neighbourhood's wifi and they need access to his computer to download some other files to counteract that virus... :O :O :O okay... in order to do that they obviously need to access the computer from afar etc. (all the computer info and passwords) AND just to be safe they need internet banking passwords and card numbers... to check that they're safe...

yeap... he actually gave them all his passwords and god knows what else :( (sidenote: he is as you call a vulnerable person). Needless to say his bank account was emptied within minutes and on top of all he got a HUGE phone bill as they were on the phone for quite a long time...

Another phone related scam is to do with Ukash electronic money vouchers (don't ask me what they are or how you can use them...) and shops who can give out those vouchers are targeted. A friend told me a story where this phone call was successful and it's grim man... The reason is that apparently they didn't just get away with only one voucher for about 20-50 pounds but somehow the cashier managed to put through (and give them) a couple THOUSAND pounds. I do wonder what did the people on the phone say to make the cashier do it so many times??? Especially as some tills first ask you is it a genuine customer or a phone call... and if you press the phone call button it automatically cancels the transaction... Can you imagine though when the person realised what he/she had done?

Don't expect me to take any calls any time soon ;)

Ttyl ;)
Jazzz...