Scammers exploit UK's digital landline switch to swipe cash

UK consumer champion Which? warns that scammers are using the ongoing phone line digital switchover program in Britain and Northern Ireland to trick customers into handing over their payment details. The organization says that victims have been called by miscreants claiming to be from BT, requesting they confirm their personal …

[Doctor Syntax]

"According to some estimates, about 16 percent of UK consumers fell victim to phone scams back in 2023"

And is that surprising? Following the online crumb trail to report a scam call leads to a page which gives advice about bot being scammed with an otpion to report that you have been scammed. There is no option to report what might well be new scams to let them chase up scammers.

Then there are alternatives for reporting nuisance calls, calls to TPS-registered lines and marketing calls. The latter, rather like advertising standards, seems to be run by the weasel marketing industry who, AIUI, allow themselves to overlook TPS if they're conducting "surveys". There needs to be a single reporting channel, run by OFCOM with action taken. Either that or my oft-mentioned idea of transfer charging nuisance callers of all stripes to pay the callees.

[Like a badger]

The problem is that Action Fraud who are supposedly the linchpin to the UK fraud reporting system amount to nothing more than an outsourced call centre that counts up reported fraud and issues press releases, but doesn't do anything about them. This was officially identified back in 2019, but the response (of the last government) was to double down, and to award a contract to notorious achieve-nothings Crapita and PWC to come up with a replacement called the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, who apparently sit within City of London Police (yes, it seems the Tories were privatising the police on the quiet, quel surpris).

[Anonymous Coward]

British.....Or Swedish?

Quote: "...BT's consumer division has already started the long process of migrating all its customers from the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to Digital Voice..."

Well....I want fibre to the premises for my apartment. BT say that there "are no plans for FTTP" in my (London) postcode.

Imagine my surprise when a Swedish company (Open Infra) has already installed FTTP to the houses of some of my immediate neighbours.

And about that chatter in Westminster about "growth"......looks like the Swedes have a better idea than the folk in SW1....

....Oh....ditto for scammer scumbags!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: British.....Or Swedish?

PSTN switch off is completely unrelated to FTTP deployment.

You can get digital voice (=VoIP) over DSL just fine. They'll just be stopping the voice aspect over copper.

FTTP will replace DSL in time, but that's not subject to the same deadline and is definitely not a prerequisite.

You have a legitimate rant, just this is the wrong thread for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: British.....Or Swedish?

@AC

Did you read this: "...BT's consumer division has already started the long process..."

Which part of "legitimate rant" did you REALLY misunderstand.....before you wrote it????

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: British.....Or Swedish?

@AC

"legitimate rant"

Huh......you are now the arbiter of what comments are legitimate......or not?

Really?

[A_O_Rourke]

Had one of these yesterday

Managed to keep the nice young lady on the phone for an hour and 10 minutes (a personal record) before she used some very unladylike language and hung up on me!

[F. Frederick Skitty]

Re: Had one of these yesterday

That is a lot longer than I've managed to keep one on a call. I will chatter away to them while still working as my brain seems to be able to handle the required multitasking. It's usually my boredom threshold or the need to do something that requires my full attention that ends the call, at which point I take the conversation in the weirdest direction I can think of. Things like, "sorry to cut this call short, but I've been balls deep in the missus the whole time and just reached the vinegar strokes".

But how is caller ID spoofing still a thing? I thought the phone operators had been told to fix that a couple of years ago or face some kind of regulatory punishment. At least calls from "The Supreme Court, London" invariably claiming I owe tax make it clear they're scammers before even answering. Because of course the court tasked with things like interpreting parliamentary acts is going to call about my tax affairs...

[PB90210]

Re: Had one of these yesterday

Not necessary to spoof when you can bulk buy VOIP numbers from the likes of Twilio Ireland.

I regularly feed my 'missed calls' or 'silent calls' (I wait for the caller to speak first as it saves time) in to Google or who-called.co.uk and the majority turn out to original from Twilio numbers

'Luke, your local energy advisor' seems to be a busy man!

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: Had one of these yesterday

Spoofing may not be necessary but it still happens. I had a very hard time explaining the problem to an angry woman who called me to tell me to stop calling her or she would call the police.

[beast666]

Re: Had one of these yesterday

The Supreme Court is the biggest scam of all.

[IGotOut]

Re: Had one of these yesterday

Hi comrade

[rafff]

Up to the minute?

Yesterday I was visiting a friend who still uses a rotary dial Strowger phone.

[Nick Porter]

'Safely Switched'

We were switched last year. We are in a rural area which gets lots of power cuts. The first power cut of the winter was 24 hours long - not so bad, except of course there was no way of actually checking SSEN updates on when we would get our power back. We had mobile signal for the first 3-4 hours but it was of course un-usable with everyone else trying to use it, and then the batteries at the base station ran down and that was it.

For elderly people reliant on telecare services this is a nightmare - the OpenReach solution of installing a UPS for the router is no compensation for the loss of powered PSTN backed by diesel generators at the exchange.

[neilg]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

When I worked at VMO2 (retired now) it was optimistically referred to (internally) as "21st century voice". - We were still supporting Telecare customers using 19th century (working) copper lines.- what a crock of shit.

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: diesel generators

The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.

[Lee D]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

I'll give you a hint.

If you have a cordless phone, this was always the case.

The way BT solved it for wired phones isn't a generator at the exchange. There's basically a UPS in the street cabinet now. And that could give out after a few hours, too. The street cabs are running hundreds of watts of adaptors and the only connection back to the exchange is fibre, not power.

So the solution to this is very simple. You do what BT used to do and now still do. You put a UPS on the router/adaptor/whatever else needs powering.

£50, a UPS (one of those in the form of a very thick extension lead), problem solved. Especially in a rural area getting lots of power cuts. Hell, you can even plug an LED light bulb into it so your elderly relative isn't fumbling around in the dark for candles, and it'll keep the wifi up so they can stay browsing on their phones and give people a call via Facetime or Whatsapp (what's that? You think elderly people who grew up being adults in the main home computing era are functionally technically useless as their own grandparents were? Nope... I live in a council retirement estate, basically, and all my neighbours have wifi, mobile phones, Netflix, etc.)

And I'll tell you how I know this works:

I live in a rural area that gets lots of power cuts. 6h40m of outage only the other day.

I brought an antique (20+ years old) UPS with me. I even went to the expense of a new battery (£30) for it.

It can run the router for approximately 20 hours or more.

I also have a backup solar system with 4KWh of batteries. They can power the UPS for literally days if required to, and perpetually through the summer.

And what happens when you power the router off a UPS and you have a blackout? Your Internet stays on. Your Digital Voice (actually just SIP) phone stays on. Because the cabs are still powered, but only for DSL... they no longer want to power every telephony appliance in the entire town in a blackout.

Many's the time that I have carried on gaming online during a complete powercut through the entire town.

Many's the time I didn't even realise the power was out BECAUSE I was gaming or watching a movie in the dark and only realises when I went to switch the light on.

In the blackouts, I still have full access to the Internet via both DSL and 5G (but surprisingly, DSL just doesn't drop out in any power cut I've had, probably because of the Digital Voice requirements nowadays).

Buy yourself and any elderly relative a £50 UPS. Plug the router, a phone charger and a lamp into it. Carry on with your life.

And especially if they are vulnerable enough to use telecare... Redcare etc. are now IP-based services. The replacement is LITERALLY a UPS because the solution was LITERALLY a UPS beforehand anyway (there's a reason telephony and PoE both use 48V and why that's a nice multiple of the 12V you can achieve with standard lead-acid batteries). And if a £50 UPS saves their life... it's worth it. Compared to paying for telecare services to put an EXTRA UPS in every street cabinet in the country just for that for a handful of customers.

The argument of "we must still have traditional powered landlines for all" has come, been lost, and gone decades ago. Buy a UPS. It'll last as long as the mobile base station's UPS, or the DSLAM at the local cabinet's UPS. And that's plenty of time for them to tell someone "My power's gone out, can you come over because I don't know what I'll do if this medical equipment turns off". Which is literally all you need. And electricity providers will literally turn up with individual generators in those instances, it's why you register vulnerable people with your utility providers.

[Rtbcomp]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

That's exactly what I do only with the addition of an automatic transfer switch (£14.00 from Amazon) which switches my internet gear, fridge and freezer onto the solar inverter. My lights are 12v LED bulbs working straight from the solar battery.

[FrogsAndChips]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

"I also have a backup solar system"

That will be handy next time the Vogons come around to build that hyperspace bypass.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

Plug the router, a phone charger and a lamp into it. Carry on with your life.

And most importantly, test them regularly. I have a couple of small 12v UPSes on my ONT & router (in addition to the big ones on desktop, server, TV etc.). When last tested a year ago they were OK, but in a recent power cut they both failed instantly. Just a month after the end of the warranty, too... Some research revealed that I was far from alone, and the problem was the simplistic Li-Ion battery charge circuit which didn't protect the cells from over- and under- charge, both cells in each UPS were dead. The seller didn't care because they were out of warranty, and the manufacturer, EATON, ignored all attempts to contact them. In the end I replaced the cells with ones that had built-in charge protection, we'll see what happens.

As for as long as the mobile base station's UPS, or the DSLAM at the local cabinet's UPS, though, that's an interesting saga in itself. If you read the Ofcom reports and requirements, you'll see that they recommend that "providers should [i.e. not must] have a solution available that enables access to emergency organisations for a minimum of 1 hour in the event of a power outage in the premises", i.e. that's what they should offer end users. For the street hardware Ofcom "would consider power backup of approximately four hours to be good practice for active fixed access equipment in cabinets at the point of installation", i.e. the usual toothless weasel words that have no legal standing, the providers can ignore them if providing adequate backup is too difficult.

In an older report from 2019 they have some interesting finds, such as: "Fixed broadband services varied from 99.67% to 99.9999%" availability, a far cry from the old days of >5-nines (99.999+%) being regarded as a universal minimum by telcos. For mobiles they note "The worst annual figure was 99.50%, [...]The best was 99.92%". There was also a huge variation between suppliers: "Most fibre broadband services using Openreach’s network also need power at street cabinets, and these all contain batteries designed to offer at least four hours of operation. For customers of KCOM’s network in Hull, the situation is similar, although around 10 % of its broadband cabinets do not have any back-up power. Virgin Media’s network uses a different technology [..] its equivalent to telephone exchange buildings [...] are all protected with between one and three days of back-up power, with some other sites required for its phone and broadband services having four hours and 90 minutes respectively. Its street cabinets do not have any power resilience" (my emphasis). Maybe it's changed recently? Something to think about when choosing a provider.

[Sub 20 Pilot]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

With you 100% on the 'dumb useless elderly' trope which never goes away in mainstream media.

Rapidly heading towards 70 and although we are all able to be caught out, I suspect I would be less likely to be scammed than your usual teen, 20's social meeja junkie who may use tech but have no idea how it works. Being able to access netflix or instagram is not a sign of understanding technolgy, any more than the ability to have a shit and flush your WC makes you an expert on human biology or waste disposal technology.

What the precious arrogant little dumbfucks don't understand is that the tech they are using is platformed on technology that was designed and built by my generation and the one before.

The number of times some obnoxious little turd has told me 'you wouldn't undertstand' in some discussion is incredible. Depending on mood, I may bite and when I do I just throw a pile of questions on the tech and then sit back as they splutter and I end up telling them how it actually fucking works.

Anyway, rant over, I enjoyed your comment. Have a good weekend.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

While not necessarily a leg up in the fields of biology or civil engineering I suspect "the ability to have a shit and flush your WC makes you an expert" on "social meeja."

Being north of the "dumb useless elderly" line I can understand how this cohort is vulnerable to these scams. I am astonished by the number of erstwhile legitimate requests by government departments a all levels, utilities, banks etc etc demanding this sort of information with an implicit threat that if you don't comply fully "bad things" will happen. Just refusing point blank with a counter-request to put everything in writing either produces a more reasonable document or vanishes as after encountering a boojum. (I admit I'm snarky but....)

[HorseflySteve]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

The PSTN is/was run on batteries; big banks of lead acid batteries wired for 48V at the local exchange. They provide(d) the supply to operate the line and subscriber instruments.

A few years back, a storm disrupted the electricity supply to the village I live in. I was lucky in only being without power for a day, but other parts of the village were off for nearly 4 days. The phone line worked throughout as I have a wired one as well as cordless.

The cabinet which houses the DSLAMs for FTTC broadband is, unfortunately, powered from the circuit that was off for days so no broadband for the entire time and, therefore, no VOIP and BTs proposal of battery backup router would have been useless.

Mobile signal? Indoors? Don't make me laugh!

[David Hicklin]

Re: 'Safely Switched'

Nothing new about this:

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2016/learning-from-lancasters-power-cuts/

Storm Desmond in December 2015 caused flooding and power cuts, and once the mobile base stations and street cabinets had run out of power most people were simply cut off from news.

Only a local FM radio station (which if I remember was flooded at ground floor level!) managed to keep going but of course you need a normal FM radio, not a power hungry brick of DAB

So in the future it is only going to get worse - much worse

[Lee D]

Yes, it was obvious that was always going to happen.

Even my workplace know that if someone calls up claiming to be from BT, Microsoft, Dell or indeed any other household name, that they are to treat it with suspicion and verify who they are. Hell, we even verify our own chosen suppliers, let alone someone calling from BT when we don't have landlines, etc. that go through BT (except as a middleman).

I bet you get the same for smart meters, for solar installs, for heatpump grants, for anything even vaguely popular or on the news or new. They are probably even all the same scammers, they just choose a random new tagline every now and then. I bet private school parents were getting scams about VAT from last summer and are still getting them now. It's how scams work.

But the trigger is when they ask for money, and your accounts department demand a PO for it and then expect to receive an invoice, and when the invoice comes it doesn't match the supplier details we have on record for our account/company so the money could be going anywhere.

Basic due diligence if you have a company with even a single accounts person on the payroll (oh, that's another one... payroll... pensions... HMRC, etc.).

At home? You just treat everything with suspicion. Even "old" people (i.e. those old enough to have seen faxes come and go, remember landlines pre mobile phones, bought themselves a ZX Spectrum back in the day, etc.) should be suspicious enough nowadays to question this. You're demanding I change my landline and asking for money? No problem. I'll contact my supplier in my own time and talk it through with them. Oh it "doesn't work like that"? I'm afraid it does. That's precisely how it works.

I've even had this from my own bank in previous years. Phones up and demands to talk to me and then demands security details from me before they'll tell me what it's about. Er, no. What do you mean I have to? No I don't. What do you mean I can't call the main bank switchboard and get back through to you by asking for the right person / department? Then we won't be talking at all. What do you mean I have to volunteer important identifying information about my account to the stranger that just called me in order to proceed? That's simply not how this works.

Oddly, I called them back on the main switchboard number, told them this guy was insistent and kept calling but refused to discuss things with me, went through the normal banking verification checks, and THEN GOT PUT THROUGH TO THE SAME GUY. Why couldn't you have just done that?

I also had another at a company who kept phoning my number but wouldn't talk to me because the order it was concerning was in my girlfriend's name. He refused to talk to me (the person who ordered, who paid, who received the delivery, who reported a problem with it etc.) and wouldn't give me any assistance and just kept citing data protection. My girlfriend at the time worked in a hospital and so was not available to jump through hoops to get him to talk to me. After a few hours of back and forth, eventually another guy got through to me and asked if he was speaking to Mr D. "I'm sorry," I said, sarcastically, "I can't tell you that.... data protection". "Ah," said the guy. "I definitely have the right man, then."

Turns out they didn't actually need to verify who I was in order to send me a packet of parts missing from a very expensive purchase.

[Lee D]

It notes that the caller ID that appears on your phone can be spoofed

"It notes that the caller ID that appears on your phone can be spoofed"

Gosh, if only there was some kind of national telecoms supplier involved, who could stop this overnight if they wanted to....

[Anonymous Coward]

Any caller who claimed to be from BT

was told to FSCK OFF.

I have not been a direct BT customer in over a decade.

I got rid of my landline last May. not had any scam calls since. Strange that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Any caller who claimed to be from BT

I had about three or four scam calls a day when my landline was provided by Virgin Media. Transferred the number to A&A VOIP, and scam calls went down to about two a month, all of which appear to be UK-based scam calls touting smart meters, solar panels.

[Lee D]

Re: Any caller who claimed to be from BT

I don't have a landline phone. I get 0 scam calls.

My mobile phone is set to ring out to silence for any unrecognised contact, and only recognised contacts have ringtones individually set on them.

I get about 1 unknown call a year, from different numbers all the time. I ignore it, they cannot leave a message (voicemail disabled), it never turns out to have been anyone I know or any company I've ever dealt with.

Ironically, I'm also registered with the TPS just in case and have made maybe 3 reports in the last 10 years (still have the same mobile number as I had 18 years ago).

The landline telecoms companies obviously never wanted to do a damn thing about it, would charge extra for Caller ID, would never stop the numbers getting out there somehow, wouldn't shut down persistent spammers (just look at the phone number lookup sites), etc. so I just stopped using their services..

The mobile companies have Caller ID by default and the ability to silence unknown numbers, disable voicemail and block individual contacts, so I kept them for 18 years.

Almost like there's a connection there somewhere.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Any caller who claimed to be from BT

We do have landline and yes we get cold callers etc calling it

However if not a known number we just leave it to go to answerphone, if they really want to speak to us they will start leaving a message.

They never do!

[Conrad Longmore]

This digital voice thingie..

This digital voice thingie involved some very low-tech work on my road. They erected old-fashioned telegraph poles to string the fibre along.. I thought these poles were a thing of the past, but it seems not.

[HorseflySteve]

Re: This digital voice thingie..

That's probably because there isn't any underground trunking in place or they were unable, for some reason, to use their pneumatic tools the blow the fibre along it if there is.

Putting up poles is considerably cheaper than digging trenches

[Richard 12]

Re: This digital voice thingie..

And by a quirk of history, telephone infrastructure like poles and cabinets can usually be put up without planning permission. There have been several cases of them being put up in extremely foolish locations.

There's a cabinet near us that is downright dangerous because it makes it impossible for the average driver to see oncoming traffic.

[IGotOut]

Re: This digital voice thingie..

Looks out of window, looks at pole and cabling that has there for almost 60 year and goes....

"And your problem is?"

[Winkypop]

If it’s an incoming landline call with a plain ring tone

Then it’s a scam. Never gets answered.

The few people who do use the landline number have their own distinct call tone assigned.

I still have the landline, reasons.

[Anonymous Coward]

"UK consumer champion Which? warns that scammers are using the ongoing phone line digital switchover program in Britain and Northern Ireland to trick customers into handing over their payment details."

"Britain and Northern Ireland"? So the UK in other words, why not say that instead?