Northwestel issues alert about calls
If you received a phone call recently looking for access to your computer and other personal information, you may have been the victim of of a telephone scam.
If you received a phone call recently looking for access to your computer and other personal information, you may have been the victim of of a telephone scam.
Fraudulent calls have been reported to Northwestel Inc. and Bell Canada from clients in the Whitehorse area.
The calls, which come from numbers beginning with the prefix 888 claim that customers' PC is sending out "bad messages”.
The caller asks them for personal log-in information and remote access to the client's computer, which can be used to steal personal information and access files.
"These calls are not coming from Northwestel,” company communications manager Emily Younker said today.
"We would like to remind customers to protect themselves from fraud and never to give away personal information to unsolicited phone and e-mail messages.”
Some of the callers claims to be from Internet Service management (ISM) Canada, C-Back Tech Support Vancouver and Feedback Tech Solutions.
Northwestel will not contact customers for access to their personal informationn or remote access to their computers, Younker said.
The company urges anyone who may have received one of these fraudulent phone calls to report the incident to the company and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
Comments (2)
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Susan D on Oct 3, 2011 at 8:55 am
I did receive a call asking if I was "the main user of my computer".
I told the person that I didn't want to answer his questions, and hung up the phone.
The scammer called back yelling at me "Why did you hang up the phone on me, did I ask you for your credit card number!!"
Very loud and threatening...continued on, threatening to call the RCMP, I agreed that he should, and gave him the RCMPs number.
He would not give me his company name but said his name was Nick Bryant...scammers.
So FYI Yukoners...
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bobby bitman on Oct 3, 2011 at 8:11 am
I got one of these calls. The callers are incredibly stupid and it is extremely easy to mess them up. Just ask them for their phone number so you can call them back. Mine gave me back my own phone number with a different area code and maybe one number changed. I told him he was scum and then he started trying to make a 'witty comeback' saying in his broken English, "Are you blessing me? Are you mutha Mary blessing me?"
I could hear a woman in the background talking to someone else and saying 'God bless you', as she asked for more and more information.
Here is my advice: If these people call, either hang up in their ear, or if you want to mess with them and you have time, start playing along. Give them wrong banking information, and wrong passwords and contact information. That ought to keep them busy for about 4 hours as they try to figure out how to steal your money with the false information. Then let them be p.o'ed when they find out they have been had.