Scam Phone Calls - Awareness and Prevention

Scam Phone Calls - Awareness and Prevention

Phone scams or phishing, involve fraudsters contacting you by phone to trick you into revealing  personal or financial information or sending money.

These scams often feature sophisticated technology like number spoofing to impersonate banks or government agencies. 

To protect yourself, never give out personal details or transfer money to a suspicious caller, and always end the call and contact the bank etc using a verified number.

Bank scams seem to be top of the list at the moment this involves a fraudster claiming to be from your bank, warning you about fraud on your account and asking you to transfer money to a safe account or provide your PIN or passwords.

Please check on elderly family members/neighbours and advise not to answer numbers that they do not no and not to give out any of their personal numbers.

Report suspicious calls to your bank and authorities like Action Fraud. 

To assist in reducing the number of unwanted calls, users of landline and mobile phone numbers can register them with the Telephone Preference Service by following this link - Telephone Preference Service.

Members of the public can also opt-out of having their contact details being able to be searched by submitting a removal of personal data form to 192.com (Directory Enquiries - like the classic phone book) by following this link Removal of Personal Data from 192.com - 192.com . This to will help in reducing the number of unwanted calls from would be scammers and cold callers.