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Members are Warned : Please take note of the following :
The following warning was said to have originally been issued by Vodafone security and fraud department, but it is not limited to Vodafone users and is still (2005) being used to land lines.
Your 'phone will ring and when answered, the following message is played:
“Congratulations - we are calling to advise you that you have won an all expenses paid trip to....... Please press 9 now to hear further details."
If you are Gullible enough to press 9
If 9 is pressed, this connects you to a premium line that bills you in the region of £20 per minute.
Once you have dialled 9 and connect, even if you disconnect immediately, the call will stay connected for a minimum of 5 minutes.
After 11 minutes, a recorded message asks you to "key in your postcode and house number".
After a further 2 minutes, callers receive the following message:
"Sorry you are not one of the lucky winners." After this the line disconnects.
The impact of the above scam is that calls can run to approximately £260.00.
With your postcode and house number, they will have your full address, linked to the phone number their computer dialled in the first place. This means that, in addition to the money they make on your premium rate connection, they also compile a valuable list of people who respond to such approaches - gullible people (to put it brutally) .
They can then sell this list and/or use it themselves for further telesales projects and sending you junkmail, all of which will of course seem completely unrelated to the scam call. .
Indications are that calls are originating from outside the UK and BT are relatively powerless to stop the calls.
The only safe solution is to hang up before it prompts you to press 9
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