They intercepted sms messages? Is that really possible? Wow.
A new scam to me
- Thread starter numbnuts
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nickyboy
Norven Mankey
- Location
- You want hills? We got hills
True...but they either had a list of subscribers to this particular service (which could only have come from BT one assumes) or they ring everyone in the expectation that a small % hit rate subscribe
biggs682
Touch it up and ride it
- Location
- Northamptonshire
Very true
classic33
Leg End Member
Or as BT did, whilst clearing out a local building, dump the paper records into an open skip. Along with some of their servers.
jefmcg
Guru
Telecoms get blocks of numbers. They would be able to tell from the digits which company originally provided the landline. They'd get a few misses for people who changed provider and kept the number, but it would not be that many people.
classic33
Leg End Member
Nine times out of ten, BT. Subscription to a companies service would be harder find.
jefmcg
Guru
Do you just pull facts out of your ..... ?
According to ofcom, it's less than 4/10 that use BT. It's still the best guess, as the next closest is Virgin at 13%.
But you don't have to guess. Which company the number was allocated to public information.
http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/numbering/index.htm#geog1
classic33
Leg End Member
Do you just pull facts out of your ..... ?
According to ofcom, it's less than 4/10 that use BT. It's still the best guess, as the next closest is Virgin at 13%.
But you don't have to guess. Which company the number was allocated to public information.
http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/numbering/index.htm#geog1
At one stage BT(GPO) were the only supplier of home lines in most areas. Thought most knew that bit, at least!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office
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nickyboy
Norven Mankey
- Location
- You want hills? We got hills
You're right, and that's what others are misunderstanding. The call to my Mum was made on the basis that she was a subscriber to a particular BT service, not that she had a BT line. As I said, either someone is leaking the list of subscribers to the particular BT service or the scammers are just phoning everyone in the expectation that a small % subscribe for this service (I'm guessing BT Privacy and Caller Display is only taken up by a small % customers)
More web research suggests that such vulnerabilities have been patched. The article refers to a CDMA femtocell and I don't think CDMA is used in the UK (I'm guessing , with no real reason, the lady in the story is in the UK).
I have a non tech fraud story, which just goes to show you don't need to go phishing via email/internet.
My Grandparents were conned by these guys - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/syria-bank-terror-fraud-gang-7861488
My Grandfather who is 94 was called by the Police and told to go and get money out of the bank and hand it over to a policeman who would come to the door that evening. My grandfather goes to the bank weekly to withdraw £50 in cash from inside the branch, he has been doing it for 20 years or more. One day he walked in and asked for 20K (a large part of his savings), they just handed it over without any questions.
He got suspicious about 2 hours after he handed the money over because the plain clothed policeman did not show his warrant card because he was 'undercover'. The local police escalated it to the Met anti-terrorism department who took it all very seriously.
After a bit of pressure the bank actually refunded my Grandfather as an act of goodwill - which I was surprised about. The incident certainly affected his confidence, which at his age was already very low. I don't think he has left the house on his own since.
My Grandparents were conned by these guys - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/syria-bank-terror-fraud-gang-7861488
My Grandfather who is 94 was called by the Police and told to go and get money out of the bank and hand it over to a policeman who would come to the door that evening. My grandfather goes to the bank weekly to withdraw £50 in cash from inside the branch, he has been doing it for 20 years or more. One day he walked in and asked for 20K (a large part of his savings), they just handed it over without any questions.
He got suspicious about 2 hours after he handed the money over because the plain clothed policeman did not show his warrant card because he was 'undercover'. The local police escalated it to the Met anti-terrorism department who took it all very seriously.
After a bit of pressure the bank actually refunded my Grandfather as an act of goodwill - which I was surprised about. The incident certainly affected his confidence, which at his age was already very low. I don't think he has left the house on his own since.
jefmcg
Guru
Yes, that's not the technique they would have used in this case.
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...bile-phone-vulnerability-snooping-texts-calls
jefmcg
Guru
80% of the number ranges, then yes. But I doubt it's anywhere near 80% the numbers that are actually currently in use.
I've had at least 7 different land line numbers since competition was first introduced (according to wikipedia, mid 80s). Remember if you move to a different exchange (more than a few miles) you have to get a new number. People who haven't moved for decades and thus keep the same phone number would mostly be older and more likely to stick with what they know. So I still suspect that the phone numbers would much more highly correlated with the current provider.
The same is not true for mobiles, I've kept the same number through 3 different companies. My number tells you nothing about who my provider is.
But, irrelevant as it's the product that they knew about.
@nickyboy: the BT site is completely useless at explaining what exactly BT Privacy is. Is it just caller ID, or does it block withheld numbers? If the latter, they could try calling with a withheld number, and if the call is rejected, try again with a spoofed number and use their "BT Privacy" script.
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classic33
Leg End Member
I went with what you said, not what you're saying.
