Hartsville Police Department issues phone scam alert
A few people have reported being called by a computer voice pretending to be AT&T. A typical message says something like, “Your wireless account is being suspended pending verification. Please enter the last four digits of the account holder’s social security number.”
It’s fraudulent; they are of course only trying to get part of your social security number. Thankfully, phones have a blocking feature. There are apps like HiYa that will intercept and block spoofed and spammed numbers, but some numbers will continue to get through, like those never ending Car Warranty sales calls.
Thanks to “spoofing”, which is the ability to make a false number show up on your phone, scammers and salesmen are able to make their calls look legitimate. If you receive a phone call from a company that you deal with, like AT&T, American Express, etc., and they start asking for personal information, the best thing to do is hang up and call the company directly.
Until the government makes a law that makes number spoofing illegal (which may not happen for a long time – call your state representative), scammers and spammers will continue to try to trick you into taking their calls for their own nefarious gains.
