WARNING - Phone Scam using up credit/bill at the moment.

Allyall

Bit of a long one, and I may be adding 2 + 2 and getting 5 here for the first part. I will be checking everything later, but for now, people may want to check this.
Too Long to Read? - Skip to bottom.


Around the start of April I kept noticing my Bluetooth turning on, I thought it may just have been me in my pocket.
Then one day I was pretty sure I didn't and convinced myself I had caught it turning on with the corner of my eye. I scanned the phone (More to check what Malwarebytes was like, than anything else) and it found one result. Not very worried I deleted it, and as I was going to anyway, I wiped the phone and did a factory restore.

Roll on a month.
I am currently on 48months, as is my Mother.
She was away, paid her roaming charges and came back on the day the phone was due to pay her monthly top up.
I paid it over the internet and within two days her credit was gone. I contacted them on the Monday and they gave me her bill, which said she was on the phone to my sister (Same sister) for 3 hours and my Mothers friend for 2 hours - which used up all of her minutes. Now, we disputed it, said there was no way she was on the phone for 3 hours, but 48months are difficult to deal with (Especially when you are supposed to be a certain age), and we couldn't prove she hadn't been, even though 48months automatically cut you off and make you ring again if you have been on the phone 60 minutes - I know they do, they've done it to me in the past (before Christmas).

I then found my credit was gone also. They won't give me any details about any of the calls I've made, unless I know specifically the day and time I want to know about.. :mad:

Roll on to today (This evening),
My sister rang me (She's with Vodafone). She received a phonecall from "America" - The caller knew her name and didn't say much.
She was on to Vodafone, and they said there is a scam that they have been noticing over the past little while, and they checked her bill.
Her bill went up €130 this evening.
They confirmed her phone has been hacked, they don't know how they are doing it, but she is to contact Comreg and notify them.
So Vodafone are aware if this Scam.

So she still has use of her phone, but her bill is being run up now as I type, presumably somebody is monitoring it.
Mine or my mothers aren't because we are with 48months and we can't top up until a certain date in the month. We could buy "add-ons" but they are ridiculously expensive.
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TLDR - Watch out for weird behaviour on your phone, run a couple of malware scans on your phone. Don't install any apps you don't trust.

Check your current bill, get an itemised break down of calls/texts/usage.

If your credit is expiring too quickly, query it.

The only Network it has been confirmed on so far is Vodafone, but I believe it is what happened to both 48month phones.

Has anyone else had this happen?

long_b

Do you know what did your sister install that enabled the hack ? Where did she get it ?

Allyall

long_b wrote: »

Do you know what did your sister install that enabled the hack ? Where did she get it ?

No, no idea at all. She has nothing really. She's not big into apps, I think she has a Galaxy S. (No idea where she got it).
She says she doesn't have any TV/Movie Apps. No games.

She says the only apps she has downloaded are
Whatsapp, and Viber.

I'm hoping to meet her tomorrow and have a look at it.