If you answer “yes” when you answer a phone call, you should know why you shouldn’t keep doing it if you don’t want to be victim of vishing.
He vishing It is one of the telephone scams that criminals use to deceive people and steal their data. A type of scam that, despite seeming new, has been going on for a long time.
What does vishing mean?
The word vishing comes from union of “voice” and “phishing”. Phishing is one of the methods most used by cybercriminals. It consists of sending deceptive emails to several people posing as a platform they trust (such as a supermarket or a bank, for example.
They do this by adapting their image as similar as possible so that the user does not perceive the differences and does not feel that they are being deceived. With this, what they are looking for is that clients give them their personal information such as their ID or credit card.
Another way to develop it is through fake Facebook pages or any other digital platform asking followers for confidential information or even falsifying raffles or contests to obtain personal data.
Taking this into account, he vishing could look a lot like phishing, but using the voice. And an easy way is through phone calls pretending to be your bank or other recognized entities.
In fact, the OCU – Organization of Consumers and Users – has come to warn about this problem, since some criminals were using their own name to deceive people. They supposedly called different people pretending to be their telephone company to report the increase in the price of their rate.
Next, they made another call – this time from another company – offering cheaper prices and claiming to be recommended by the OCU. That is to say, a real fraud.
Don’t answer “yes” when you pick up the phone.
Using this form of scam, the trend is now based on a new way of taking advantage of users with he vishing: this time recording your voice.
One of the most common ways to answer the phone – at least in Spain – is to respond with a simple “yes”. A seemingly harmless way of answering, but one that can carry many risks.
What scammers do is first generate a climate of trust making the person believe that they are a representative of one of the services for which they pay: a bank, a sales service… To do this, they mention certain basic personal information and asks him a series of “innocent” questions to answer with a “yes.” At the same time it is recording voice to later approve contracts, financial transactions in their name and, in certain cases, falsify their identity.
Another way can even be to make the call and as soon as the person answers with a “yes,” hang up instantly without even needing to interact.
In any case, with that simple recording in their hands, the scammer can use it to carry out various procedures on behalf of the victim. A real problem depending on the level the criminal can reach.
