{"id":1044,"date":"2006-11-16T10:47:20","date_gmt":"2006-11-16T14:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2006-11-16T10:47:20","modified_gmt":"2006-11-16T14:47:20","slug":"shutting-down-scammers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=1044","title":{"rendered":"Shutting down scammers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does anyone know where one can complain to get entirely fraudulent phone numbers shut down? A friend of my wife’s, a genuine hero, the Russian dissident Mikhail Kukobaka, has been hit by a transparent scam letter telling him he has won the “BBC Lottery”, based in Harrogate. At least, it is transparently a scam to any native speaker of English — the BBC, <\/span>apparently, uses a Spanish Yahoo email address involving the spelling “lottory” — but he wasn’t certain of this and asked for advice.<\/p>\n\n

I don’t think any lasting harm has been done, but the letter also contains a couple of contact phone numbers. One is a mobile<\/del> a VOIP <\/span>and the other an 0870 number. These should be shut down, of course, but I can’t work out from the Ofcom website where to start. I suppose the other obvious step is the police cybercrime unit.<\/p>\n\n

It is remarkable, though, that a man who survived 17 years in the Gulag, two years in Chicago, and now lives in Moscow as a pensioner, should be gullible about something merely because it comes in his email, in a foreign language.<\/p>\n\n

UPDATE<\/span>: I attempted to ring the Essex Police high tech crime unit. It is unavailable because of a switchboard malfunction. No one I spoke to had an email address. Nor is one listed on their web site.<\/p>\n\n

UPDATE<\/span> 2: I did eventually managed to check the numbers through ICSTIS. <\/span>they are both operated by Magrathea Telecommunications, which provides invisible VOIP <\/span>services, amongst other things, so that there is no obvious way of knowing where they will pop out. Next stop, to ring the company. But first, finish something else.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does anyone know where one can complain to get entirely fraudulent phone numbers shut down? A friend of my wife’s, a genuine hero, the Russian dissident Mikhail Kukobaka, has been hit by a transparent scam letter telling him he has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}