Phone scam has robbed victims of £7million this year

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/crooks-using-new-vishing-scam-2231560

There are various versions of this scam but the main trick is for the victim to be persuaded to call their card provider. The victim puts down his phone and then dials the correct number but, because the scammer doesn't ring off, the victim is still speaking to the scammer who is able to obtain all his secure details.

While the person is panicked into believing that someone has gone on a spending spree with their plastic, they are lured into giving away their password.

Tricks of the trade include asking the person to tap their PIN number into the phone to keep it secret – but all the while the phone keypad is being monitored to identify the numbers.

In some cases, gangs have even sent couriers to collect credit cards to take them away for analysis, having already conned their victim into revealing their PIN number. Scammers also convince their victims they are a real bank, police or IT official by asking customers to ring them back.

If you receive such a call on your landline - call your card provider on your mobile/cellphone.

Scams from online and banking fraud to vishing and ID theft have soared by 12% in the last year, netting £336.7million compared to £300.7million in the previous 12 months.[This would just be for the UK]

I don't take calls from strangers (unless I'm baiting known scammers ).

This article reminds me of the text message I got from a phone number with 727 area code. It was a long message about my bank account being locked due to suspicious activities and that I needed to call a different unfamiliar phone number to reach the bank's security department. I haven't heard of this scam before and knowing about fraudsters using someone else's credit card, I might have panicked if not for one single thing. I didn't have any account with the said bank.

So I got the sender's phone number and reported it to http://www.callercenter.com to raise a warning. I also called the bank and brought the scam to their attention.