Just had this through from a friend - and unusually in these types of alerts, it actually happened to my friend rather than the 'friend of a friend'

The latest telephone 'scam' has arrived.

I received a call from a 'representative' of BT, informing me that he was disconnecting me because of an unpaid bill. He demanded payment immediately of £31.00, or it would be £118.00 to re-connect at a later date..

The guy wasn't even fazed when I told him I was with Virgin Media, allegedly VM have to pay BT a percentage for line rental!

I asked the guy's name - the very 'English' John Peacock with a very 'African' accent - and phone number - 0800 0800 152.

Obviously the guy realized I didn't believe his story, so offered to demonstrate that he was from BT. I asked how he would do that and he told me to hang up and try phoning someone else of my own choice - he would disconnect my phone to prevent this.

AND HE DID !! My phone was dead - no engaged tone, nothing - until he phoned me again.

Very pleased with himself, he asked if that was enough proof that he was with BT. I asked how the payment was to be made and he said credit card, there and then.

I said that I didn't know how he'd done it, but I had absolutely no intention of paying him, I didn't believe his name, or that he worked for BT.

He hung up.

When I rang 1471 the number was withheld and I then phoned his fictitious 0800 number - it wasn't recognised.

I phoned the police to let them know and I wasn't the first! It's only just started apparently but it's escalating.

Their advice was to let as many people know by word of mouth of this scam. The fact that the phone does go dead would probably convince some people it's real, so please let as many friends and family be aware of this.

It's good, but not that clever. He gave the wrong number - it should have been 0800 800 152 which takes you through to BT Business. The cutting off of the line is very simple, he stays on the line with the mute button pressed and you can't dial out - but he can hear you trying (This is because the person who initiates a call is the only one who can terminate it). When you stop trying, he cuts off and immediately calls you back. You could almost be convinced! The sad thing is, that it's so simple that it will certainly fool the elderly and vulnerable.

Please pass this on to your friends and family.

This is of course a design flaw in the system, inherited from its early days. There is no excuse for it still being a feature of modern computer based systems.

Thanks, Digby. Will pass it round.

My OH had a similar call on Monday, from Barclaycard. Except we think this was genuine - it was sorted out by his phoning the number on our latest bill.

But my first reaction was (suspicious old bat that I am!) mind it isn't a scam!

Thanks for that warning Digby, that is quite a nasty little scam, that

Hrm, can't test this at the moment as I don't have an anologue line handy, but I think hitting recall or tapping the receiver button quickly might get around this.

Thanks Digby

I had that earlier in the week and assumed it was someone trying to harvest emails




Better safe than sorry.....

Health Warning - this reply is techical from someone who spent 40 years working in the telecommunications industry. Read it only if you have nothing better to do

If I may make a correction, it is not a flaw but a requirement. In the early days of telephony in this country, calls were charged per call and not for duration, and the requirement of Calling Subscriber Clear was placed on equipment manufacturers so that the ownership of the duration of the call was placed with the person paying for it, namely the caller, not the called person. However, a guard timeout was instituted to ensure that the condition of Called Subscriber Held (CSH) did not persist for longer than 3 to 6 minutes, after which an alarm would be raised in the exchange. When long distance telephony (the old Trunk Calls) came in, they were set up by an operator and the same timeout would alert her (sorry but it was always a lady!) and she would check that the caller did indeed want the call to be cleared.

Later when Subscriber Trunk Dialling came in and users could make their own long distance calls which were charged by the duration, the timeout was changed to the expiry of two meter pulses in order not to rack up excessive charges to the caller during the CSH condition. When the more affluent started to have more than one telephone in the home, it was found particularly useful to be able to answer a call in one room, return the handset to the cradle and continue with the same call in another room by exploiting the CSH condition. The alternative of having both handsets off the cradle led to poorer speech performance. This situation is much less likely to occur nowadays because of the widespread use of the DECT cordless telephone system.

During the 70s the design of today's computer controlled digital switching systems (known as System X) took place and my company, then known as GEC Telecommunications, was responsible for the hardware and software design of major parts of the new network. British Telecommunications took notice of specifications in other countries (where CSH was not a requirement), but still placed with us the requirement for the calling party to control the duration of the call, but requested an accurate timeout, not one such as 3 to 6 minutes. I am fairly sure they chose the minimum, so today you should find that an incoming call gets released exactly 3 minutes after the called party puts the telephone down. The timeout for incoming long distance calls will of course be much shorter. The System X network is still the major switching system in this country, but is to be replaced with an entirely new network providing telephony and date based on internet-type equipment. Having retired, I am not in a position to know how they are going to deal with paying for calls or what will be required about Called Subscriber Held conditions. But the changeover from the old network to the new one will not take place over night, so there will be a requirement for the two to interwork for a period of time, and that may indeed dictate that CSH will be with us for a while yet.

It won't . You just have to be patient! In the public network, recall or tapping the hook switch activates the called party being connected to additional circuitry for other features, but does not drop the incoming call. Things are different for private exchanges used in a business environment where the requirement is often for First Party Clear, ie whoever clears down first, regardless of who made the call, drops the connection.

Anyway, the scam is still a scam and it is certainly true that the majority of people will not be in a position to realise that the threat of losing the ability to make calls is simply not true, so a big thank you to Digby for alerting us to all this.

They should be ashamed of theirselves, I'll telll everyone I know. Thanks Digby.

So you'd have been around in the days of Strouger/uniselectors and the like! I remember playing with that stuff studying telecomms at college! I did some work in a place back in ~2000 that still had magneto coils and tag frames for its internal comms network, believe it or not!

Didn't they sell all that Strouger stuff off to India/Africa?

Maybe you should have picked "Erlang" as your username!

Ah, good old Agner Krarup Erlang!! I'm still having trouble getting people who use the software my company provides to understand that his formulae don't really work for today's multi-skilled call centre environments...

Anyways, it's a nasty scam and it will really fool a lot of people. The ingenuity of people in coming up with these cons - what humanity could have achieved by now if it was better directed. *sigh*



Mosschops

EEEK , I struggled with Erlangs on my Level 3 (third year) Digital Coms course as part of my degree, still don't think I got my heard round them.

Well I got lost at the 'Health Warning - this reply is technical' bit.


Technology is not my strong point

Correction read, understood, and noted.

In which case I think it is a crazy requirement, and was crazier in the past than it is now. Obviously done for the ease and benefit of the service provider, rather than in the best interests of the customer.

The requirement mixes up two things that should be separate:

1. Who is permitted to terminate the call. It should be either party. And instantly - not after a timeout.

If I want to commit some criminal act I just make sure to get my accomplice to phone the intended victim first. I then have three minutes to break in and overpower them while their line is tied up and they are unable to phone for help. [Or am I missing something here]. Well this WAS a possibility when we only had land lines. No doubt the 999 call would be made on a mobile now.

and

2. Who pays for the call. Obviously it should be the initiator, irrespective of who terminates it.

As this is not really a technical thread and with due respect to Digby, I have started a new thread on the technology of the UK Telecommunications network.

See here if you are interested.

Don't worry about that, if it keeps it at the top of the list for a bit and stops someone being caught out by the scam, it's got to be a good thing regardless of whether it's still on topic or not.

Thanks, Digby - it must be "be kind to a techie" week

hmmm...you might need more than 3 minutes to get this out of your intended victim's place....

Thanks Digby. I'll pass it on to my mum who's "old and vulnerable" though mercifully now she's cottoned on to the OAP line "Oooh, I don't understand these things. My daughter deals with everything for me. Would you like her number? Here it is ....." Funny thing, though, I've never had a call from any of these people!

Bless, that's brilliant