Scammed By a Nice Man With a Cold Call

I should have switched off my head and followed my intuition

“How are you?” he asked. I told him I was alright. I wasn’t expecting a call, didn’t know his voice, and wanted him to hurry up. Why had he called?

He was from Sky, he informed me pleasantly. Now Sky was my internet provider, so that seemed fair enough. He then said Sky knew our internet was slow and it sometimes cut out altogether — they’d detected the error messages from our router. So he said.

Under His Expert Guidance, I Typed My Way Straight into His Scam

“Yes! It’s true! That has been happening.” We were on the same page. Our internet had been particularly bad in the last few weeks. I was surprised they could detect this through their systems. The wonders of modern technology!

Well, he was intending to fix it, so I was glad. He didn’t give me an overview of how or when he’d fix it but he started giving instructions in a kind, guiding voice. I supposed we were going to fix the problem remotely.

He needed me to go to a website. He told me which characters to type, one by one. I supposed it was a way to make sure I got the characters right, like when we give a phone number or postcode over the phone.

The first website was a speed checking website. Our internet speed was abysmal. Well, I knew that already and he’d announced this at the start, but perhaps this was a routine step to confirm to me it was true, in case I hadn’t noticed. Or maybe he needed to record the results for his records? He asked me about the speeds. I told him.

There was a lot of background noise. Seemed like lots of other people speaking. I asked him about this. He said those were his colleagues, helping other customers.

But the background noise of what seemed like male voices was odd. What about social distancing? There was still a pandemic going on. Perhaps he worked from a centre in India? He had an unmistakable Indian accent. Why was his company so relaxed about social distancing? Or maybe they were socially distanced, just loud? Still, even pre-pandemic, a call from an office wouldn’t include constant chatter.

Then he took me to another website, again guiding what I typed into the browser. He asked if I was seeing the word Sky, to confirm I was on the right website. Well, yes, I thought to myself, but I could have found it without him dictating what characters to type! There was an extension to this home page URL, numbers, and letters in the browser address. I supposed for remotely fixing router errors, it made sense to have a special page?

I do not remember every step in the sequence but somewhere along the line, he wanted me to read out the numbers appearing on my screen.

“But won’t that give you access to my computer?” I asked, perplexed. Surely he didn’t need full access to my computer. I’d never seen those numbers before but I could see the words, Your “Desk” can be accessed with this address.

I gave the nice man on the phone the first six numbers and stopped short. Suppose this was a scam? I told him I’d call Sky and get back to him after verifying he was who he said he was. I wasn’t comfortable and I told him this.

I could hear my son’s steps heading upstairs. I knew he was going to tell his father I was on a call with someone I didn’t fully trust and he was worried. His father assumes everyone is untrustworthy till proven otherwise, whereas I wait for proof of untrustworthiness. Usually, he makes the decisions around our tech issues, but he was busy at work (in the home office corner of our bedroom) and I didn’t think I should disturb him.

Was there another step before he put me onto a colleague? It may be that I gave him all nine digits after all, that he persuaded me to, against my better judgement — though I was so sure I hadn’t, till many hours later. But when an alert came up on my screen, a warning, I mentioned the warning to my man on the phone line, as further explanation for why I wanted to abort the process.

Please note, I owed him no explanation and aborting the call was literally in my hands!

He said he would get a colleague to help me with this.

I didn’t need help. Didn’t he understand? I was trying to tell him I wanted to end the call. All I had to do was hang up. But that seemed rude.

He put me on to someone else. This person had a no-nonsense, here-are-my-instructions sort of voice. She seemed to represent authority and experience, his supervisor perhaps.

She sought to reassure me there was nothing to worry about. She said she had a number which I too had, a number only Sky and I could have. This was evidence they could only be who they said they were.

I wasn’t reassured, but I was interested in her proof. I assumed her next step would be to show me she had access to this special number. There was a part of me wanting to believe her, to believe the tone in her voice, which I also heard in her colleague’s, suggesting I was a paranoid and overly suspicious human being, worrying over nothing, while all they were trying to do was make my internet work faster and better.

Again, she gave me step-by-step instructions.

Look to the lower left-hand corner of your screen. See where it says, Type here to search.

My husband was listening with the door slightly ajar now. I wanted to show him I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t going to be scammed. I could tell this was suspicious.

I was explaining to the woman on the phone line, as I had to the man before, I’d rather get in touch with Sky and confirm this whole process, then we could resume if everything was as they said.

My husband asked for the phone.

He let the woman tell him what she wanted him to type. He too wanted evidence of where she was going with this.

Then he brusquely asked for her name and details. Then he said he’d be contacting Sky with her details. She hung up before he did.

I Let My Thinking and Social Brain Override My Emotional Brain

I bet you’re thinking, what was she thinking? How could she be so stupid? I’d say the irony is I was thinking too much. Just look at all the explanations I came up with for every alarm bell in my head!

• My emotional brain was screaming, “Stop, this doesn’t feel right!”
• My thinking brain was saying, “Keep calm and carry on. Pay attention and gather evidence. Then you will know if you should follow through or abandon the call.”
• My social brain was saying, “Well you’ve decided you want to end the call but be civil about it. No need to be rude. What emotions do you pick up on the other end of the line?”

Meanwhile, the scammers were saying, “One more step, one more step, we’ve got this, we’ve got this.”

In hindsight, the evidence was there but I gave it all the benefit of the doubt.

There are millions of people with slow internet all over the country. What made me and my router so special, we’d be singled out for a remote solution? Had the man asked my name, confirmed my identity, given his name? Why hadn’t he explained the process with an overview, to gain my trust the usual way, instead of leading me letter-by-letter, to fake websites with URL add-ons I missed for the red flags they were.

In the end it was my social brain that sabotaged me. After I decided I should abandon the call, I continued to engage. I was trying to communicate with the possible scammer in the same way you’d communicate with someone you trust and respect. I was trying to explain why I was hanging up. I wanted to end the call amicably, at the right moment.

My vulnerability came in four layers and each was exploited effectively:

• technical ignorance (common)
• having a need the scammers could offer to help me with (slow internet that sometimes cuts out)
• willingness to engage and to have my day interrupted (unusual)
• reluctance to be rude (a personal trait which is sometimes a liability)

Usually, I get scam calls every week. In seconds I hang up.

My spam box is full of fake Paypal and Amazon emails. I know Amazon Prime wouldn’t approach us by phone and authentic Apple and Paypal emails wouldn’t be riddled by misspellings. And if my account’s not actually suspended, then obviously your email is fake. Clever me. Or not.

I’d Been Scammed Into Installing AnyDesk

We had a lot of cleaning up to do. We took screenshots of open windows, checked for installed programmes, switched off the computer and wifi, contacted Sky, and contacted our local computer tech guy with screenshots and questions.

Though I was shaken and distressed for hours after my encounter with the scammers, I clearly remembered refusing to give the man the last three digits. But in an optimistic attempt to preserve some confidence in my judgement, had I wiped out my memory of giving into him eventually?

We worried about our synced computers. Was access to one, access to all?

And somehow, AnyDesk had been installed. Or was it just a test version? We removed AnyDesk (or the test version), before switching off the computer. But was the interval where we were figuring things out and taking screenshots, enough time for them to download all our files? Was it already too late, even if we wiped our hard-drive and changed all our passwords? Or had we narrowly averted disaster by ending the call before giving the scammers permission for remote access?

Later, in researching AnyDesk, I learned it was created as legitimate software, but has also been misused as a tool by scammers. I’d fallen prey to a technical support scam. The scammers present themselves as technical support staff in order to harvest sensitive information and reap victims’ bank accounts.

And Finally, it Would Never Happen to You!

I know you’re reading this, smugly confident it would never happen to you, but a word to the wise is enough. Adam K. Raymond argues the very thinking ‘we’re not vulnerable online’ makes us the perfect target!

When I read Aimée Gramblin’s Don’t Fall for the Executive Imposter Scam, I thought maybe I could tell you about how I lost USD$2500 in merchandise ten years ago, to a smooth-talking, handsome ‘businessman’. I had no idea, just one month later, I’d be scammed by a stranger on a nearly antique device (a landline telephone), possibly handing him access to my computer and everything on it!

Thanks for reading! And remember, when your emotional brain gives you that uneasy feeling in your gut, just abort. Nice is overrated.