Phone Scam Warning

Beware of the following schemes:

Star-7-2, billing back to you: You receive a call from a stranger posing as a telephone technician or telling you that he has been arrested for driving with a suspended license and is in jail - or is in a situation that requires your immediate help. "I need to reach my wife and tell her what happened so she can pick up our two kids. Would you dial *72 and then her number?"

Star-7-2 is a custom feature for call forwarding. When the customer dials *72 followed by a telephone number, it activates the call forwarding feature causing all your incoming calls to ring at another number. At the end of the other line - whether calls have been forwarded to a landline, a cell phone or a payphone - the original caller's partner-in-crime is able to accept all collect and third-party calls, while telling your own legitimate callers that they have the wrong number. You get billed for all calls made because your number is the one from which they are forwarded. This ingenious scam, which even overrides cell phones inability to get collect calls, may go on for several days before you become aware it has occurred.

*72, Not for you: Do not accept collect calls from individuals you don't know, regardless of who they claim to be. Also, never activate *72, the call forwarding feature, unless you yourself wish to have calls forwarded elsewhere.

Within the sound of my voicemail: Hackers can compromise your voicemail system in order to make fraudulent collect, third party or direct-dial calls. Hackers make use of an out-calling feature on many systems that allows them to make the calls at your expense. It isn't until you receive notification from your telephone company's security group, notices something different about your voicemail greeting, or receive a large bill that you realize you have become a victim.

To prevent this:

• Always change the default password provided by your voicemail vendor.  
• Choose a complex voicemail password, of at least six digits, so it's difficult for a hacker to guess.
• Don't use obvious passwords such as an address, birth date or phone number.
• Change your voicemail password often. 
• Check your announcement regularly to ensure the greeting is indeed yours.  (Owners of small businesses should consider disabling the auto-attendant, call-forwarding and out-paging capabilities of voicemail (if these features are not used), because those features also can be hacked.