This guy shows up knocking at my door at 6:30 a.m., saying he got into a fight with his friend and lost his ride home. Can he use my phone to call a friend to come get him?
As I was not fully awake and wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible, I handed him my wireless handset through the door while he stood outside. About three minutes later, he ended the call, thanked me and left.
It was a few minutes later, when my brain finally kicked into gear, that I realized parts of his story didn’t jive. Now I wonder if it was some sort of scam. I searched the internet, but couldn’t find a similar con except for the UK.
Does anyone know about a scam along these lines in the U.S.? Did I just “taken” for trying to help someone out?
Bah, the only thing you got “taken” for was the dime that it costs to make a 3 minute call, and that’s a small proce to pay to help someone… Unless you weren’t watching him while he used your phone and he cloned it and is now making fraudulant calls charged to your cell, ehehe.
Maybe in Ohio people still knock on stranger’s doors, and maybe in Ohio people open their doors to strangers, and maybe in Ohio people hand their phones to strangers. We don’t do those things in the big city. But maybe they still do in Ohio. In the big city, the guy either called China or a 900 number which will cost you $50 and put $50 in his pocket.
Thanks for the replies, Kal and zorabel. It doesn’t sound likely this guy could have done anything. I don’t have a cell phone, just a wireless land phone. I thought there might be a new trick with technology I was unaware of. And the fact that I can’t get in touch with the phone company to check my line for two days was freaking me out.
It could be he intended something else, but thought better of it, especially in view of the taser gun I was holding in my hand. Or it could be that he was genuinely in trouble and just needed to call his friend.
And ** isthatsowrong?**, thanks so much for the condescending and cynical reply. Yeah, us goobers in Ohio actually try to help people in trouble. We’re simple that way. :rolleyes: Let’s hope you never need someone’s help.
The perp might redirect your phone through another service provider, or the perp might have their own redirection service, every minute you are online you could be lining his pocket.
I’ll have to get back to you on this, but there is a possibly very expensive scam here, contact your current service provider, report it and if possible get details about the call that was made and see if it is indeed a redirection.
To prevent such a scam, you offer to dial the number yourself, and talk to the person on the other end of the call yourself as well…because, of course, you can give better directions.
Or you can simply say no. Handing the guy a quarter or two is optional at this point.
Once I got a strange collect call from someone with the same (very common) name as my son. Thinking it was him, I accepted the call, only to find out it was some guy in prison who said that he’d dialed the wrong number and couldn’t make any more calls and would I please call his sister for him. Weird caveat in that was that he instructed me that I needed to dial *72 before dialing her number. Well, I did call the “sister” for him and left a message on her machine that he wanted to talk to her but had gotten the wrong number, but I skipped the *72 part. A couple minutes went by and I received another call from this guy asking why I hadn’t called the sister for him and asking when I would. I told him I had and hung up. Well, the guy called me probably 20 times over the next two days, more and more irate each time. I very seldom answer my phone, but had some really interesting messages on my machine. It’s amazing how much someone can say in that tiny interval they give you to say your name when you’re making collect calls. Anyways, I looked up the *72 code on the net and found out that what that particular code does is forward all your calls to the number you dial afterwards, so that if I had dialed the code before the number, he would have been able to make collect calls to her, but the billing would have gone to me. I called the phone company and reported it and the guy I talked to there told me it was a very common scheme. Anyways, perhaps your phone borrower person had your calls forwarded to someone else for similar purposes? Have you received any phone calls since he used your phone?
Finally, rather late in the day I suppose, I found the security briefing I was looking for.
This is a quote.
There is another scam but it depends upon service provider maintenance methods.
You can recieve a call from an ‘engineer’ who claims to be testing your line, you are asked to put in a certain key combination, what this actually does is divert outgoing calls to another phone, equally someone asking to use your phone can just as easily put this code in for you, it needs some knowledge of the specific maintenance program but there are crooked individuals working within phone companies.
Sorry it took so long to reply, we get lots of differing security briefings and they get buried under mounds of paper.
(A) No person, with purpose to deprive the owner of property or services, shall knowingly obtain or exert control over either the property or services in any of the following ways:
(1) Without the consent of the owner or person authorized to give consent;
(2) Beyond the scope of the express or implied consent of the owner or person authorized to give consent;
(3) By deception;
[quote]
I would say that using someone’s phone to rack up hundreds of dollars in charges when the owner of the phone has consented to the use of the phone to call a friend to give the user a ride would be use “beyond the scope of the express or authorized consent of the owner.” Obviously the law may be different in the UK but in Ohio if the call was indeed a scam then a crime has been committed.
Umm, if it’s a cell phone the last called number is going to be listed. I would take that number and call your phone company. Ask if the number is a reported fraudulant number and maybe ask if they can refund that call (I doubt it, but there’s no harm in asking).
Also, cell phones are normally blocked from making 1-900 and overseas calls unless expressly allowed to do so (we have to activate each cell allowed to make overseas calls and only with good credit).
Check with your cell phone and land line company and see if you can trace the number (if it’s something that you don’t recognize). There are a few fraud numbers that directed your call to africa? or someplace but it doesn’t work AFAIK on cell phones yet (well, it wouldn’t work with my cell phone).
I’ve been meaning to post a follow-up. (My phone, BTW, is a land phone, not a cell phone.)
The first weekday after this incident, I called the phone company and explained the situation. They stated that they couldn’t tell me anything about the call made due to “privacy” concerns. “But it’s my phone, I’m paying for the service!” I argued. They insisted that I wouldn’t be able to find out anything about the call made short of a court order. I had to wait for the phone bill to arrive.
The phone bill finally arrived two days ago. No weird charges – it was the normal monthly rate.
The guy must have either been genuinely stranded, or was unable to pull a scam on my phone.
Thanks for the input. Next time someone needs to use the phone I’ll offer to call someone for them.