Catch Of The Week: Phone Scams

Courtesy photo

By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos

I received this question from a Los Alamos Daily Post reader:

“We receive a lot of robocalls and other spam calls, while there does not seem to be a way to block them, we were wondering if you know why flooding everyone with scam calls is effective? We have answered a few of these calls and nobody is there, and when we call the number back it is disconnected.”

I would not recommend answering or calling back any of these scam calls, it’s always better to avoid interaction. That said, good question, and what possible benefit can it be to scammers to send out an endless stream of robocalls? 

So how many robocalls are we looking at here? According to a report from YouMail, a free robocall blocking app for cell phones, in February alone Americans received 4.3 billion robocalls. Yikes! And over the past 12 months Americans have received over 51.5 billion robocalls. 

How do robocalls work, and how do they put out such a high volume of calls…and why? Firstly, thanks to a technology known as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), robocalls are incredibly cheap to make. What is VoIP? From Wikipedia – “Voice over Internet Protocol, also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet.” VoIP calls are much cheaper than traditional long-distance rates, which makes it easy for scammers to send out a large volume of calls at very little cost. 

In addition, VoIP makes it easy to spoof a number. So, you likely will never get a robocall from the same number, it’s simple to just spin up a new number for each outgoing call. Scammers often will spoof numbers that are local to your area to try to get you to pick up the phone. I might get a call that looks like it’s coming from Los Alamos, but the actual caller may be based anywhere in the world. This unfortunately means that blocking a number isn’t likely to be helpful, they can easily switch up the numbers.   

Not all of these calls are scams, some are from legitimate, albeit annoying, businesses, but enough of them are scams I’d advise avoiding interaction with them completely. Ignoring an unknown call is always your best option. 

While these calls are automated recordings, the recording will generally give you the option to speak with a person. Behind the scam calls are massive call centers, frequently overseas, operating like any legitimate business’s call center. For the scammers, it’s just another day at work. I found an interesting article on some of the people behind the scam calls from the NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-centers.html

Why so many calls? It’s a numbers game…while many people ignore these calls, enough people interact to make it worthwhile and to make the scammers money. 

In 2022 the US Department of Justice took action against multiple India based call centers. 

“According to U.S. Attorney Erskine, the charges, and other information presented in court: Criminal India-based call centers defraud U.S. residents, including the elderly, by misleading victims over the telephone utilizing scams such as Social Security and IRS impersonation as well as loan fraud.”

That said, it is difficult to pin these scammers down, and most of them go about their business with little fear of repercussion. Robocall scams are low risk, low cost and, when they work, high reward. 

Unfortunately, this scam won’t be going away any time soon, if your phone provider offers any kind of spam blocker, take advantage of it. Your best defense is to not answer your phone and let it go to voicemail so you can screen the call.  

If you do happen to answer a call like this, here are some tips for what NOT to do:

  1. Confirm the pronunciation or spelling of your name.
  2. Give out your address.
  3. Share a credit card number.
  4. Give any part of your social security number.
  5. Try to enlist the person on the other end of the phone to put you on any “Do Not Call List.”

Additional resources on robocalls can be found on the FTC’s website: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/robocalls

Stay safe, and don’t answer calls from unknown numbers!

Editor’s note: Rebecca Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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