Not to blame the victim, but this is an apt example of social engineering at work. The so-called 'educated' person in question is not too aware I guess. All the banking institutions send you a gazillion emails about not sharing your card information ever with any employee. In fact it has come to a point that the government of India runs TV ad campaigns regarding this on all the channels under the sun. So the ignorance of the victim is to blame for this as well.
Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
61–70 of 196 posts
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would be a legitimate use case for redirect services?
Once upon a time redirects were used as pricing mechanism for phone-based "apis". So you could call some weather forecast, or sports analysis, yada yada. I don't know if these still exist, it would not surprise me if redirects are used mainly for fraud nowadays (they are huge in voip call centres breaches).
Believe Shazam also started as such a dial in service.
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the contrary, if someone claims your business, it's extremely difficult to undo. My mother has this issue with her 1 person LLC - some random person claimed it, and the reclaiming flow was busted last I checked
When I did this a long time ago, I received a postcard to the address on the website, contain a PIN code that I needed to input on line. Don't they do that any more?
Could you change the address (as described in this article) then claim it?
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#64A local taxi company near me was relisted on Google maps using a pay-per-minute redirect service. The scammers get paid, and the customer is non the wiser until they get their bill. I was charged about £5 for a 30 second call.
Yep, years ago, we needed to call the NHS (out of hours doctor) and looked it up on Google, first result (sponsored) turned out to be a premium rate pay per minute redirect number. That turned out to be a £90, 30 minute call when we got our bill. I believe this practice is now harder to do or not possible.
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#65A local taxi company near me was relisted on Google maps using a pay-per-minute redirect service. The scammers get paid, and the customer is non the wiser until they get their bill. I was charged about £5 for a 30 second call.
I thought those were restricted to specific area codes. I think the phone company should be liable in scams like this. Also, there should be a way to block all pay-per-min calls on your phone. This is one of those areas government needs to regulate.
All premium rate numbers in the UK begin 09.
(0870 is "national rate", which can be more expensive than it ought to be, but not to the level available on 09 numbers.)
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#66The same thing happened to a cousin of mine. I wrote a (somewhat more detailed than this article) blog post about it a month ago. Didn't gain any traction on HN then but here it is: http://blog.abhijittomar.com/2018/10/19/google-business-clai...
Yes, that's a good article and has more detail than either the submitted url ( https://www.businessinsider.com/scammers-edit-google-maps-ba... ) or the one it points to https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/a-new-bank-scam... , so we've switched to it above. Hopefully it will gain some traction on HN now. (You won't get the HN karma, but we plan to implement karma sharing for cases where multiple submitters co…
Thank you.
I've added the news links to my article for reference as well.
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once upon a time redirects were used as pricing mechanism for phone-based "apis". So you could call some weather forecast, or sports analysis, yada yada. I don't know if these still exist, it would not surprise me if redirects are used mainly for fraud nowadays (they are huge in voip call centres breaches).
Believe Shazam also started as such a dial in service.
Indeed - I bought some early Bluetooth headphones that have a 'shazam' button, and pressing it would Dail their 4 it 5 digit UK number at the time. I think it was something like 2580 (the numbers straight down the centre of the dial pad.) Calls were capped at 50p I think and you got an sms response with the song title and artist fairly swiftly.
Strange how fast things change hey! Old news article about shazam and aqa https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/shazam-aqa-the-answer-is-on-you...
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
They'd get sued? Really?
GDPR principle d if the business is a person? (I don't actually know)
GDPR data protection rules apply to natural persons, aka data subjects.
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#69A local taxi company near me was relisted on Google maps using a pay-per-minute redirect service. The scammers get paid, and the customer is non the wiser until they get their bill. I was charged about £5 for a 30 second call.
Hi, I work on maps spam. I was wondering if you could dig up a link to the maps business, and include a rough idea of when this occurred. Thanks!
The UK phone number plan allocates the prefix 09… (or +44 9…) to premium rate numbers[1]. A change to an 09 number should be a red flag for the edit — I'd expect very, very few businesses to use a premium rate number as their main contact number. In fact, it seems many categories of business are banned from using them [2].
Some other European countries have similar prefix-based number allocation systems.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_the_Unite...
[2] http://www.fairtelecoms.org.uk/service-numbers-084-087-09-an...
Re: Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were you able to dispute this charge?
I told my phone company, they wouldn't refund. I also reported the number to the communications ombudsman .. haven't heard anything since unfortunately.
I had dealings with a UK Ombudsman before, they said the company had promised not to do it again so the case was closed ... I was a bit surprised that they trusted businesses so much.