Shine Fm Blog

A New Phone Scam - this one's sneaky

Posted by Stephanie Nicole | POST A COMMENT

It's a bit complicated, but worth knowing about because it's easy to fall for:

A person calls stating they’re from the Do Not Call List and ask if you want to participate in a program to trace illegal calls. They give you a 5 digit number tell you to write it down so you can repeat it to the person when they call back to activate the trace program. This happened to a local guy – and when the automated call came with the 5-digit number, he noticed it wasn't from the government. It was from Craigslist, the online classified ad company. The person called him back for the 5 digit number and he refused to give it – the person asking for the number got angry, and the local guy knew it was a scam. The scam started when Craigslist implemented a new security measure to curb the number of scammers posting phony ads designed to steal people's money and personal information. Now when you go to place an ad, you must type in an actual working phone number, something con men don't want to do. Craigslist's automated system then calls that number and provides a 5-digit pin number. You must enter that number to activate your online account and place your ad. So scammers need the pin numbers to keep on posting phony ads with anonymity. And if you provide the pin, YOUR phone number is the only real contact. If they’re posting phony ads using your phone number, and they’re discovered, guess who’s phone number is the only contact for police? Yours.