If you have ever had fraud on your credit card, you probably know that the credit card companies call you if they feel there is suspicious activity on your account. But what happens if the bank can’t get hold of you, because your phone lines are busy?
One of the latest technology scams is that crooks use software to overwhelm your lines. Similar to what cyber hackers do when they want to shut down a website (flooding it with large amounts of traffic), the scammers can do that now with the phone lines as well.
The traffic sent to tie up your lines means hundreds of automated phone calls on your number. Whenever it happens that you actually pick up, you will hear white noise, advertisements, and any other garbage phonic background – and of course, you’ll hang up.
This might be a sign that you could be a victim of the “Denial of service attacks”, as FBI calls it. This only happens when the scammers get hold of all your personal information and then start either charging your account, while your bank cannot reach you for confirmation of the big transactions.
How to avoid: unfortunately, there are not many ways to avoid this, except never give your personal information to anybody, through online surveys, contests, or shady subscriptions.