Pre-recorded phone call from "Lloyds TSB"

Did you get a call within the 3 hours.

Yes, I have carried out an online transaction, I think I was paying over a largish sum, that stipulated I would be contacted by phone to confirm it was me..........the call was automated and I just had to press a number.....but for the life of me I cannot recall if it was Lloyds.

In message , Peter Saxton writes

I regularly get emails from the following sources inviting me to click on some presumably poisonous phishing link, roughly in order of frequency:

Assortment of Nigerian benefactors or Lottery wins HSBC (your account has been frozen, or similar) TSB " PayPal "

A few others I can't recall.

Very few purporting to come from my own bank, which are forwarded to: phishing@mynicebank

I get those emails.

This was a phone call. Do you get phone calls like the one I got?

Aren't the police famously disinterested in identity theft / card fraud (or potential losses from one's bank account), simply telling people to refer the matter to their banks and not even issuing crime numbers?

In message , pete writes

I understand that they are not interested in potential losses, in order to gain any form of credibility you need to have actual losses. Seems a step too far.

In this particular case, I'm not sure what the police could be expected to do. If it was a scam, the phone call may well have originated outside the UK. With nothing else to go on, and in view of the fact that a crime had not actually been committed, there's not much they could do about it.

Nobody would bother reporting Nigerian scam emails to the police, so why is it any different just because its a phone call?

Chris

A friend reported a crime ongoing in his road and called the police. He was interrogated on the phone with about 50 set questions by which time the perpetrator had long gone.

They only want to set up their speed trap vans with the latest high tech mega buck equipment installed to collect the ready money.

It's a false alarm!

To answer what the police could have done. Can't the police trace the phone call via BT and/or the foreign country? If it had been somebody other than Lloyds TSB then a crime would have been committed. A crime isn't only committed when somebody successfully deprives another of property. The attempt is sufficient.

This is what happened. My step daughter tried to transfer money to somebody else. Her "preferred telephone number" is her mobile but Lloyds TSB range the landline which I usually answer expecting business calls. She was at work at the time.

Value of transfer: £5

Around here the police usually won't even take details of a crime unless there is a high probability of conviction. No prizes awarded for guessing why.

FWIW I have had many of these types of calls. What annoys me is some anonymous person claiming to be from my bank, calling from a witheld number asks me to prove who I am by divuluging personal information. Of course I refuse to do so but they should not be doing this in the first place. In fact all such calls have proved to be genuine but this technique could easily be used for fraudulent purposes.

In message , Peter Saxton writes

Not from banks, but your call(s) seem to follow the same script as the barrage of calls I get which ask me to press 1 or 9 for further information. I let the answer phone take them. Admittedly the call from your own(?) bank is more sinister.....

In message , Mark wrote

I was called by Legal and General. They withheld their number and wanted me to answer numerous "security" questions. When I said I would call them back the representative gave me his contact number. I said I would go to the web and verify the number - only to be told that it wasn't listed!

Tracing phone calls internationally would be a very complicated and time-consuming process, with no assurance that you would end up with a useful result. It's not something that the police would even attempt unless they were investigating something like a serious terrorist incident. It's just too easy for a fraudster to cover their tracks. Even if they were successful, and after weeks of work they find it originated from someone using a VoiP phone in a remote part of Kyrgyzstan, what are they going to do then?

Chris

They probably only called you to try to sell you something anyway.

My credit card company is now worse. They have an automated system that calls you (if there is a suspected fraudulant transaction) and asks you to type in personal information via the keypad. You can't even speak to a human!

I don't agree that it would take "weeks of work". It may take a few minutes work every week for a few weeks.

So, criminals just go long distance safe in the knowledge that they are free to do what they want?

Are you sure? Exactly how are you going to track down someone operating from a small town in the middle of nowhere in a what could be a rogue state that doesn't pay a lot of attention to what the rest of the world thinks anyway? These people almost certainly use some kind of VoIP service to make their calls. They're not going to be using their own home phone number.

Yup. That's just about the way it is. So what is anyone going to do about it?

Chris