Scammers use social engineering to get you to respond the way they want you to
Most of us would have been instantly suspicious and so was the Redditor. He was told by the callers that they didn’t need any of his information and all they needed to do was call up his T-Mobile account to check out his account. That alone should have had the T-Mobile subscriber tapping the button to disconnect the call. But things went from bad to worse when the callers said that they needed his account PIN to access his records.
The potential victim had a great response
At this point, the T-Mobile subscriber told the scammers that he was uncomfortable giving them his account PIN. The response will surprise you because it makes the call seem even more suspicious. The callers on the other end of the line said that they would send him a link to reset the PIN. The potential victim had the perfect response. He told the scammers, “How about this, why don’t you give me a call back number, and I’ll verify it with T-Mobile before calling you back.” The callers immediately hung up and never called back.
I went to an AT&T store to fix an issue. The next day I received a call with spoofed caller ID “AT&T” saying “We’re calling about your recent support experience with AT&T, we’d like to give you $50 credit for feedback, it will take 2 minutes.” They asked for my PIN to verify me. I figured, why not.
Woke up next day to my phone line not working. People emailing me asking me if I’m OK. I contact AT&T, the scammers had done a SIM swap and I had $2,000 charges – calls to Cuba (!).
I told AT&T what happened and they said they’d have a specialist team call me to sort out the refund.
They called me, from “AT&T” and they wanted to issue the refund but before proceeding the wanted my new PIN lol I told them it was ridiculous they were doing the same thing the scammers were doing, so I refused (out of principle now) and asked for a phone number I could call to verify their identity – and guess what, they said this department didn’t have a call back number, so either I have to give them my PIN, or there’s no way to proceed. Took hours of complaints to supervisors until one issued the refund.”
-Reddit subscriber new-to-reddit-accoun
As one Redditor noted, “T-Mobile reaching out to save you money? lol. Good on you for being hesitant.” Another response gave good advice. “Never answer unknown numbers; let it go to voicemail. If it’s something seriously important they will either say in the voicemail or continue to call back.”
A T-Mobile rep reveals information that you need to remember
A T-Mobile representative pointed out that the carrier’s policy does not allow reps to ask you for any verifiable information on an outbound call. He went on to write that T-Mobile reps are not allowed to ask for that information “even if you call T-Mobile and the call drops before we ask you for your name and PIN, we still aren’t allowed to ask you for that information when we call you back.”
The scary thing is that this seems to be the exact same phone call that many have been receiving over the last two weeks. While the majority are recognizing the call as being a scam and hang up on the call in order to confirm its authenticity with the carrier, those that don’t are incorrectly blaming T-Mobile.
Whether the scammers promise you a discount or convince you that you’re late making a monthly payment, they bad guys know exactly how you’ll respond. This is called social engineering and can be defined as the use of human emotions such as fear, urgency, and curiosity by attackers to manipulate people to respond in a manner the attackers’ desire. For the bad actors, it is like shooting fish in a barrel.
One last piece of useful information from a T-Mobile employee. Calls legitimately placed by a T-Mobile employee will show up on your phone as coming from “Customer Care.”
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