Second time I got a call from this number and it shows on my phone as "invalid Phone number". NO message has been left. Scammers, scumbags, ... I just entered it on my phone as "Spam #10" and designate it as a blocked call.
Hung up on the answering machine after calling at 5:30pm on a Saturday evening.
Caller ID says "INVALID NUMBER". If this was, like other people here say, a back & knee brace sales call, it is the latest harassment of this type in a long wave of these garbage calls.
I have pasted the article from my local news about this scam, as well as the link to the article - It sounds pretty documented to me:
http://fox4kc.com/2017/01/26/can-you-hear-me- ... up-immediately/
NORFOLK, Va. – 'Can you hear me?' It is a simple question, but police say answering it could make you the victim of a scam.
Police in Virginia are now warning about the scam, which has also been recently reported in Florida, and, in 2016, in Pennsylvania.
“Anytime you become victim to a crime, you just feel violated,” said Officer Jo Ann Hughes with the Norfolk Police Department.
Here’s how it works – police say you’ll receive a phone call from a number you do not know.
“Usually it has a familiar area code,” Hughes told WTKR, making the potential victim more likely to answer the call.
Police say after you answer the phone, a person – or automated recording – on the other end of the line introduces themselves and their business.
“That kind of warms you up,” Hughes said.
After the introduction comes the question, "Can you hear me?"
“All of us, our natural response is to say, 'Yes,' or 'Sure,' or 'Yes I can,'” said Hughes, but she says this is exactly what you do not want to do.
Police say scammers record your ‘yes’ response. In one variation of the scam documented by the Better Business Bureau in October, 2016, the criminals may pretend to be from a cruise line or home security company and will later bill you for products or services you never asked for.
If you try to deny the charges, the scammers will playback your verbal confirmation ‘yes’ and threaten to take legal action if you don’t pay.
In another variation, scammers may use the recording to authorize charges on a stolen credit card or with a utility company by tricking an automated system, according to CBS News. The con artists may have already stolen other personal information through a data breach that would allow them to pass the security checks.
“A lot of times, victims do not want to come forward because they are embarrassed. They feel like, ‘It was my fault. I should have known better,’ and they are just embarrassed by it all together. So we do not get a whole lot of reports, unfortunately,” said Hughes.
Police say to avoid this scam, follow this advice.
Do not answer the phone from numbers you do not recognize,
Do not give out personal information,
Do not confirm your number over the phone,
Do not answer questions over the phone.
And finally this piece of advice: hang up the phone and call police instead.
“We really want people to hear this,” said Hughes. “[We want people to] say, ‘Look, I just heard about this scam on TV,’…and to hang up.”
Please read that news release for understanding.
Although the police supposedly said the call was dangerous, and could lead to a scam, they did NOT say that a "yes" answer alone would cause a financial loss.
The CBS report supposedly stated a "yes" would authorize use of a stolen credit card ... but, as intelligent people know, card thiefs do not need a "yes", all they need are the numbers. Again, a simple "yes" is not the problem.
The CBS report also states the "yes" could be used to facilitate phone "cramming" ... but, again, crammers do not need the "yes", they simply cause subscribers to change telcos.
So, it seems the bad guys might use the "yes" recording to play back to the mark, and attempt to convince the mark that a simple "yes" means they agreed to something (that they did not agree to).
Yes, (there, I have said it), avoiding the scam is very important ... but the scam is not nearly as dangerous as some folks have stated.
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Please reply to this post, on 800notes.com, to let us know you read it, or have taken suitable actions to protect yourself.
The News and police only put out a general warning without thoroughly thinking about how a "recorded yes" of YOUR voice could be used to scam, but couldn't work without YOUR voice, but the bottom line is there is no YES scam. Its a RUMOR!
The scam states they record your voice and splice whatever they want to seem like you agreed to it or open accounts anywhere with it. WHY wouldn't a scammer be able to do those without your voice.......thats what NOBODY has yet been able to explain. There is NO documentation of a scam and those News stories, BBB report or police reports aren't documenting any case, only an idea of a scam.