Telephone scam

[padier]

Hi folks this came across my email cannot verify it or discredit but it may be true Cheers

Subject: Please pass this on, it has been confirmed by Telstra & Australia Police

I got a call last night from an individual identifying himself as an AT&T Service technician who was conducting a test on our

Telephonelines.

He stated that to complete the test I should touch nine(9),zero ( 0), hash (#) and then hang up.

Luckily, I was suspicious and refused. Upon contacting the telephone company, I was informed that by pushing 90#, you give the

Requesting individual full access to your telephone line, which allows

Them to place long distance telephone calls billed to your home phone number.

I was further informed that this scam has been originating from many of the local gaols/prisons.

DO NOT press 90# for ANYONE. PLEASE pass this on to your friends.

If you have mailing lists and/or newsletters from organizations you are connected with, I encourage you to pass this on.

Stephen Cooper

Detective Senior Constable 29748

Victoria Police State Crime Squads

Level 12, 412 St. Kilda Road , Melbourne

(03) 9865 2663 or 0414644499

Stephen.cooper@police.vic.gov..au

mailto:Stephen.cooper@police.vic.gov.au

[SQU-47N]

wow...lucky u refused, its just a shame so many other ppl would take it as serious and press 90#.

cheers for the heads up

[DJKOR]

90#. LOL. Try it. I DARE YOU.

[Madrox]

What the warning letter floating around the Net doesn't say is that this scam only works on telephones where you have to dial 9 to get an outside line. Unless you have to dial 9 to get an outside line at home, this scam does not affect residential telephone users. Dialing "nine-zero-pound" on a residential phone will only give you a busy signal. That's it.

On some business phones, however, dialing "nine-zero-pound" may transfer a call to an outside operator and give the caller the opportunity to call anywhere in the world and charge it to your business' phone bill ... maybe. It all depends on how your business' telephone system is set up. If your company doesn't require you to dial 9 to get an outside line (for example, if you have a direct outside telephone line on your desk or if your company's phone system requires you to dial a number other than 9 to get an outside line) the "nine-zero-pound" scam does not affect you. Also, if your company's phone system is set up so that you cannot make a long distance call once you have accessed an outside line (a lot of companies now limit all outside lines to local calls only), the "nine-zero-pound" scam does not affect you either.

The "nine-zero-pound" story only affects those businesses that require you to dial 9 to get an outside line and then place no restrictions on who or where you can call once you get that outside line. And, just to be anal-retentive, let me say one more time that, unless you have to dial 9 to get an outside line at home, this scam does not affect residential telephone users.

[Supercharged TRD]

What a stupid scam. Kind of severely limits their target audience doesn't it.

[Madrox]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/04/1057179142856.html

an article from smh in 03 disspelling the myth

[DJKOR]

You will find that even with most business PABX, dialling 90# is just going to send the tone back to the person on the other end of the line. With a lot of business phones these days, you need to manually open a new line by selecting it on the phone. Because of the touch tone feature, you don't select another line whilst on call by pressing a numeric button. Unless your business is REALLY bad at updating things.

[Madrox]

at work we must dial 0 to get an outside line.

once the call is connected though we can push whatever we want and it won't disrupt the call.

[DJKOR]

at work we must dial 0 to get an outside line.

once the call is connected though we can push whatever we want and it won't disrupt the call.

That's the same with ours. You can only dial an outside number by pressing 0 only after you pick the phone up from scratch (and not from someone calling you), or select a second line while on the call with someone. Pressing '0' while on call ends up with the you and the other person hearing a combined 941 and 1,336 Hz tone (standard zero DTMF signal).

These emails that get sent around like this make me wonder how some people really fall for things. Like those Nigerian email scams. You think to yourself about how stupid they are, yet you hear about all these people falling for it.

[SuperDave]

If we email Constable Cooper will he back up his email? :P

Or is that there to give it some sort of credibility?

[Madrox]

"the vodaphone you have called has incoming call restriction activated, please try again later"

its to give credibility

and the other number is a residential number.

Edited January 7, 2009 by Madrox

[leasaunce]

we received a call from them thru our business once. But instead of pressing the 90#, cant remember exactly what they said, but they usually ask for the onwer or manager, and if you say yes, they can transfer your phone carrier to theirs without signing a contract. been going on for months now...

[Hiro]

In all of this, no-one noticed the fact that it's still an American email, just with the peoples names changed to make it look more Australian....except they forgot to change AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph) to something more believeable to Australians, like Telstra.

I've probably received this email a dozen times over the last 5-10 years, most times with different names etc, the fact that the rest of the text is identical is enough to prove to me that it's a scam/urban legend, even if nuggets of it are true or based on truth.

Some people really need to stop being so naive/gullible.