Well, new to me, anyway. The damned phishermen have found a new way to try to rip people off, this one via the phone (land-line types). Remember the news a few weeks back, about hackers having gotten into those enormous credit-card company data-banks? While they didn't get Social Security numbers or other ultimately sensitive information, they did get names, telephone numbers, and other contact information about the customers of those companies -- and that's what they used to call me three times in a row on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this last week, trying to con me out of the information they needed to rip me off via my credit-cards. Here's what happened:

July 11, 2005 e.v.: I work as a phone-psychic, so I sleep in late. When I got up that morning, I found a message on my voicemail saying that [credit-card comapny's] Fraud Department was trying to contact me with an "urgent message," and asking me to enter "1" if I was [name]. Since it wasn't a live call, entering 1 wouldn't do anything, so I erased the message, and decided to call [credit-card comapny] as soon as I could to report it. The voice was exactly like that of [credit-card comapny's] phone-robot, the one that tells you what to enter on your phone's keypad; but I knew that legitimate credit-card companies never call the customers except for promotional calls, and even then they never ask you for sensitive information. Further, the fraud departments of such companies never initiate calls to the customers; they wait until you call them or send them a letter, or email them, to respond. But since it was just a message on the phone, with no way to get beyond "enter 1," I didn't feel it was so urgent I had to do it right away. So I didn't call my credit-card company that day.

July 12: I was sitting at my desk, working on something, when the phone rang. I picked up the phone. The same phone-robot voice from yesterday's message said: "This is [credit-card comapny's] Fraud Department with an urgent message. If you are [name], please enter 1." I entered 1 -- not the world's best move, because doing so might have forwarded the call to someplace in Honduras or Venezuela or an even more exotic location, but I didn't stay on long, and if I had a charge for it on my bill, Qwest would take it off at my request -- and the voice said, "Please enter the last four digits of your Social Security number." Right there, I hung up that phone so fast that light would have had trouble catching up with the receiver. I then called [credit-card comapny]to report that call as well as the message from the previous day. They said, no, their Fraud Department had placed no calls to me whatsoever. I knew that -- that's not how they work. But at least they took down the information.

July 13: When I got up, as I always do, I checked my phone to see if anything had been left on my voicemail. Oh, boy, there sure had! The message, in the same phone-robot voice as before, said: "This is [credit-card comapny's] Fraud Department with an urgent message for [name]. Please call 800-342-3084, and enter Access # 7128275 by July 23rd. If you have any further questions, please call 1-888-213-8847." I saved the message, then called my credit-card company and reported it -- and they told me that they'd been besieged by calls from customers all morning long telling them essentially the same thing. I then called Qwest, my phone company, and reported it and [credit-card comapny's] earlier response to my call earlier that same morning. Then I called my city's branch of the Federal Trade Commission and reported it to them. The FTC's response was an "Oh, boy!" feeding-frenzy cry -- they're looking for those hackers, as it is, and the details I gave them could really help track the bastards down, put the brakes on their operation, and get them royally busted. I will probably make a report of the whole thing on the FBI's site, as well -- I just love to watch federal feeding-frenzies when they're aimed at assholes like whoever these phishermen are.

Scary observations:

1) Whoever the scammers are, they went to the trouble of taping [credit-card comapny's] phone-robot voice, then rearranging syllables from it to manufacture a message that sounds just like [credit-card comapny's] legitimate phone-robot.

2) They had my name, phone-number, and the fact that I have a credit-card with [credit-card comapny] -- the same sort of information that they could have gotten from that recent hacker job on the major credit-card companies.

3) They had everything set up perfectly to net anyone foolish enough to provide strangers with sensitive data -- or even somewhat financially sophisticated people who weren't aware of all the ins and outs of how legitimate credit-card deal with their customers, or the way that hackers and phishers can rip people off. Doubtless there are a lot of people out there who may have gone ahead and entered the last four digits of their Social Security numbers when asked to do so, not because they were fools, but rather out of sheer reflex in response to a voice that sounded exactly like that of their credit-card company's various phone-robots. I.e., these bastards have an outstanding working knowledge of certain aspects of human psychology, those that have to do with human social behavior, reflexive responses to things like those robot voices and the "Please enter 1" sort of request, etc.

4) The "toll-free" numbers they gave on that third call to me almost certainly would have forwarded the call to some other country, and even if I hadn't given them any sensitive financial information, I could have ended up with a huge bill for an international call on the next statement from my phone company.

5) If I had been up when that third call came in, and if I had picked it up before it went to my voicemail, it's quite possible that rather than the message that was left on my voicemail that day, they might have asked me to press 1 if I was [name], and then, if I did, once more ask for the last four digits of my Social Security number. If I did that, of course, they'd have had what they needed to take me to the cleaners via my credit-card.

So if you get such a call on your voicemail, if it gives detailed information of the sort included in my July 13 message, write it all down and save the message on your voicemail, so you can refer to it later. If the voice sounds exactly like that of your credit-card company's or bank's phone robot, note that, too. Then call up your credit-card company's customer service center and report it, and follow up that call by calling your phone company and the FTC to report it, as well. You might also want to report it to the FBI. The telephone numbers of all of these are in the blue government pages of your phone book (your credit-card company's fraud department's number will be on the back of your credit-card). If you want to send the FTC or FBI an email about it, the FTC's website is at http://www.ftc.gov/, and the FBI's is at http://www.fbi.gov/. (For a guide to all government-related services, see http://www.governmentguide.com/main.adp.) If you have given out sensitive information when prompted to do so by such a call, call your credit-card company's fraud department immediately and let them know, so they can block your card and, if you call soon enough, prevent your having your identity stolen (after a day or so, that may be impossible, so you want to get on that right away).

Please pass on this information to everyone possible.