No, They're Not Going to Pay Your Bill The Human Element

Episode 18: No, They Are Not Going to Pay Your Bill

On the day of this recording, I received a phone call claiming to be from “TMobile/Sprint”. They wanted to advise of an overpayment on my account and that I was owed a credit. As I fumbled in an attempt to record the conversation and string the scammer along he must have realized I knew what his real intentions were.

I knew this scam existed but I had never been the target of one before. The scammer is attempting to steal your cell phone account, personally identifiable information (PII), and/or banking account/credit card.

So how does this scam work, and how can you prevent it? You’ll have to listen to learn more.

Transcription

Speaker 1 0:00

People are the weakest link in any cybersecurity plan. We’re distracted, exhausted and often unmotivated. It’s time to change the approach used to protect our businesses, technology, identity and data, the human element has to be front and center in a war against data breaches and ransomware attacks, it’s time to educate.

Speaker 1 0:52

When I was a kid, we had something called three way calling. I know, I know, we still have it today, you could still have a conference call or you know, more often than not, now we get on FaceTime or zoom or something like that, where more than three people are on. But it was a big deal. When I was a kid to have three way calling, we didn’t have cell phones. They were available, but not really realistic for most people. We didn’t have zooms and all those things back when I was a kid. And so we had this three way calling feature, you had to pay a couple extra dollars a month for it. And we would use it to our kids would use it to prank call people. And so we would call up a third person using three way calling. And they would not know that one or the other person was on the line. And we would get them to admit to things that they wouldn’t normally admit to or we would try to prank them. crank calls were very common back in those days. That’s when we still had to coiled phones with the 25 foot long cord so that we could reach into our rooms or whatever. The good old days because the calm the scam calls didn’t really exist beyond the prank calls. So I would venture to guess that a lot of those kids that were grand calling people back then are probably contributing to the scam calls today. But it was a simpler time, people weren’t afraid to answer their phones, and take calls. Unless they didn’t want the world to know about the secret crush they had on their classmate. Welcome to the human element podcast, visit our website at the human element dotnet for more content to help you strengthen your awareness of the people problem in cybersecurity. I am Scott Gombar. Owner and Washtech a client focused security minded proactive IT service provider. Welcome to Episode 18 of the human element podcast. This episode is titled No, they’re not going to pay your bill. So I received a phone call today as I’m recording this. This is April 18 2023. And I’ve heard of this scam before. But I’ve never received a call or or there’s never been an attempt to get me to fall for the scam. And unfortunately, the scammer realized that I was onto him before I could even start recording the call. So I received it on my my cell phone. I was out I was looking for the app to record calls. While it was trying to string them along. And he realized pretty quickly that I knew what what the gig was. And the gig is it happens seems to happen more with T Mobile, but it happens with all cellphone carriers, at least here in the US that I’m aware of. So the big four are is really the big three now T Mobile and sprint. And that was the first red flag by the way, I’ll get to that in a second T Mobile sprint merge. So they’re 118 T and Verizon or the other so I have T Mobile....