RACHEL RICKARD STRAUS: How to avoid falling prey to phone scams

My cell phone provider calls me every few days to try and squeeze me into a new deal. At least I think it is.

The calls could be real. But they can also come from scammers. I honestly can’t say.

Scammers often call their victims as if they were from their phone company, bank, HMRC, or any other trusted provider. They gain their victim’s trust by sounding sincere and then trick them into giving up their personal or banking details.

I have studied scams for years and have come to a sad conclusion. The bitter truth is that there is no foolproof way of knowing if you are speaking to a genuine, trusted company or a scammer posing as one.

There used to be a few important tests you could use to tell the real thing from the fake.

But scammers have thwarted them all. It used to be that a call was genuine if the caller knew your personal information or account information.

But now scammers often have access to this information and will copy you to gain your trust.

It used to be that if the caller called from an official number, you could be sure it was genuine. But now scammers are using a trick called spoofing to change their caller ID to make it look like they are calling from an official number.

They also use something called “smishing” to add fake text messages to the end of chains of real text messages from your bank or another carrier, making them indistinguishable on your phone.

Companies such as banks, insurers and telephone providers usually have security processes in place to help their customers identify when calls are real and when they are faked. But these can cause confusion.

For example, some may condescendingly say “we would never ask for personal information over the phone,” while others cheerfully ask you for your date of birth, mother’s maiden name, and countless other bits of personal information when they call you.

Some companies tell customers “we’ll never ask you to share your PIN,” while other companies won’t talk to you until they’ve texted or emailed you a security code and asked you to read it over the phone.

So, what can we do to sort out the real calls from the scammers?

Well, new regulations are in the pipeline that may help a little bit. Cold calls for pensions are already banned, which means that if you get a cold call about your pension, you know it’s illegal and you should hang up.

But proposals for a similar ban on all financial products are expected to be announced in the coming days.

That way, if someone calls you out of the blue to sell you a financial product – from investments to cryptocurrency – you know to hang up.

The technology that enables scammers to send thousands of fake text messages at once will also be banned. That too should help.

But these rules will not solve the problem completely.

I think the only surefire way to make sure you don’t get scammed over the phone is to avoid contacting companies that call you.

If my bank, phone provider, insurance company, or any other company calls me, I’ll hang up – politely. Then I find a real phone number for them and call them back. But before I call back, I make sure that the previous phone call is finally ended.

That’s because scammers can stay on the line and still hear you, so that even if you think you’ve had a new conversation, you’re still on the old one.

You’re on the case

Reader HM from North Yorkshire came in contact with an excellent idea to help us spot real phone calls from scammers.

“When a customer contacts their bank, they are asked a series of security questions to prove their identity,” she says. “But what about the same process the other way around?”

HM suggests that all customers should have a ‘communication password’ of their own choice, which is kept safe by their bank.

Then when they get a call from their bank, they can ask ‘what is my communication password?’ to check if the caller is genuine.

A great idea worth exploring.

Do you have ideas for tackling scammers? How do you determine which correspondence is real and which is fake? Let me know.

r.rickardstraus@dailymail.co.uk