The Daily Scam Newsletter (September 23, 2020)

In the summer of 2019 the Senate passed the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act. It required phone companies to implement new technologies in January 2020 to reduce robocalls and help identify likely spam calls for consumers. Since these new technologies were implemented we feel that the number of robocalls has decreased significantly and most of those that are ringing on our phones are identified as “potential spam” calls. However, please stay vigilant because some scam calls are getting through...

Last week, one of our readers reported a scam call claiming to be from an AT&T representative. The woman reporting this scam to us said that a man with a heavy Latino accent called her from 214-771-2335. He stated that he was calling for AT&T to report that someone was trying to purchase an iPhone using her account information. The caller had the woman’s address as verification. (That information is child’s play to find online!) He asked her to change her PIN, saying that he would provide them with a new secure PIN number, and that insurance would be placed on her account. Unfortunately, the victim did give the man her PIN. During this exchange, the victim looked up the area code to see that the call came from Texas. She asked the man why his call was coming from another state and he replied that he was working from home. The woman became very suspicious when the “AT&T representative” said “don't log into your account until we hear back from the fraud department.” She then hung up and called the real AT&T immediately! They confirmed it was fraud. The scammer had already placed an order with AT&T from her account and used the woman’s phone insurance plan somehow. The woman also started receiving emails from her insurance policy about a loan application submission. The real AT&T was quick to take action to cancel the order while she was on the phone with her.

Another woman told us last week that she received a call from Amazon Customer Service at 888-280-4331. This is actually the real Amazon customer phone number BUT it was spoofed to look real. The call was coming from somewhere else in the world, but not Amazon! The person at the other end of the line asked her questions which she said didn’t seem right to her. She also said that the representative told her that an order was delivered last Friday to a wrong address. He asked her for her correct address, which she provided. She also told him that she didn't order anything from Amazon. When she asked him what it was she was presumed to have ordered, he couldn"t answer her. She became suspicious, said “you sound like a scam” and hung up! There are hundreds of people on 800notes.com reporting fraudulent calls coming from the real Amazon Customer Service number because of phone call spoofing.

Then we heard from a third TDS reader who received a recorded voice message on his phone from "Amazon Customer Support." The supposed support representative, a man, said he was calling about a possible fraudulent charge to the Amazon account for $279.99. The “representative” did not identify what had been purchased for that amount but he did say "you don't need to do anything if you made this purchase, your Visa card will be billed." If, however, the recipient had not made this purchase, he was asked to call back 469-839-6098, a number that clearly does NOT belong to Amazon according to our Google searches. How's that for engineering human behavior to call back scammers!

To learn more about these call scams, visit some of our articles:

Amazon Customer Support Scams
Apple Customer Support Scams
Apple Tech Support Scams
Microsoft Tech Support Scams

For many weeks now we have been reporting on malicious links that use the subdomain “track” and domain “agttrckr[.]com.” We’ve connected these links to malware multiple times and they are showing up in a wide variety of emails sent to people across the Internet. Here is one such email that was sent to a 76-year old retiree who hasn’t posted a resume on any job site. If you mouse-over a link and see track[.]agttrckr[.]com, DEEEELEEEETE it!

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