Spoofing: Sei skeptisch bei unerwarteten Anrufen

Spoofing: Be wary of unexpected calls

Imagine, your mobile rings and a familiar number, such as the Swisscom hotline, appears on your screen. You accept the call in good faith. However, it is not a Swisscom employee on the other end of the line, but a fraudster. He wants you to make a transfer to “Swisscom”. Read on to discover how this can happen and how you should respond.

With the ‘spoofing’ scam, a caller manipulates the technology to make a familiar number appear on your phone screen. This type of scam is very much like phishing, which has long been known to the IT sector. The faked, but authentic looking identity can give the victims a false sense of security and fool them into disclosing sensitive data.

What should you do in this situation?

  • Always be wary and suspicious if you are ever asked to give out sensitive information. Even if the caller says the information is required for identification purposes.
  • Tell the caller that you’ll call them back. Then, instead of simply hitting callback, you should input the official number. You will find this on a statement or on the website. Ask if they have just tried to call you.
  • Hang up if you feel pressured by the caller. This is not rude, but is for your protection.

What is Swisscom doing about this?

We have implemented a range of anti-spoofing measures in the network. However, it is impossible to completely protect against spoofing as the fraudsters are constantly finding new tactics. It’s a game of cat and mouse. We advise all Swisscom customers to activate the Callfilter call blocker. This will protect you from unsolicited advertising calls and individual spoofing calls.

How to protect yourself

To activate Callfilter on your mobile, go to Swisscom Cockpit and click ‘Call settings’. In My Swisscom, you can activate or deactivate Callfilter for your fixed access line with one click. In this article, you will learn more about Swisscom’s free Callfilter and how to create your own blacklist. > Read the article

Unfortunately, you have less control in the opposite case: if your number is hijacked for spoofing calls, there’s nothing you can do. In most cases, however, the issue resolves itself after a few weeks. > Go to report by SRF

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Illustration of a man with a laptop
a year later

I received a call from a number in the Lausanne region. (021 520 27 43) it looked to me like a call center with a lot of people in the background. The woman introduced herself as Mélanie (something) and she knew my first and last name. She told me that a decision had been made concerning policyholders born between 1950-1970 (sic!) and when I told her that I was at AI, she hung up on the other end. I tried to call back, thinking that perhaps it was my connection that had failed, but what a surprise, “this number does not exist”. So my question is, how did my data and my number get to these people? I will of course block it but it worries me to know that there are people who have access to my data like this. So, what is Swisscom doing regarding the data thefts that have taken place in recent years? (As reported by the press).

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PS: the decision taken was apparently that insurance premiums were going to drop for this age group. Afterwards I was not entitled to the “pitch” of the upcoming scam, since the person hung up.

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@Vunibie41 Hello

No, these are insurance brokers, the addresses with your file come from there!

Already reporting several subjects in the press, never followed up.

Cordialement Doremi

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2 months later

Well, since I read the article about SPOOFING: I mean, if there are telemarketers at work who even forge numbers (probably computer scientists), you have to expect other tricks too!

I have e.g. E.g. received a lot of calls for a while about changing health insurance; I haven’t called back any phone calls that I missed lately.
if I didn’t know the number! - You’re asking me about “common sense?” - I’m of the opinion that you can avoid a lot of problems, if you think about with a little “logic” and “common sense” WHAT’S ACTUALLY PLAYED!
I’m a bit tired and don’t want to have any further discussion today! Tomorrow is a new day and we can move on!

I wish you, dear Jüre, a good night and nice dreams!

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@Freiweinteuk58

The calls that interrupt after 1 or 2 calls are often survey institutes with so-called speed dialers. It works like this:

For example, if 10 out of 30 agents are free, then 10 new numbers are not called but, depending on the configuration of the call center dialer, 20, 30 or 40 are called in parallel in order to fill the lines more quickly and to utilize all agents more quickly. The excess ongoing calls are then simply canceled again in the ringing state.

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8 months later
6 months later

We also received a call from a number starting with 078……. supposedly calling in the name of Assura, with a background hubbub, the person, a woman on the line, telling us to be on -insured my husband and myself sic!!!!! when we asked where she got this information from, she hung up. BEWARE SCAM

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3 months later

The protection is easy even without filters and Combox: You answer such calls and end the call immediately without comment. If you do this consistently for a few months, the number will lose importance in the call center ranking and the calls will become fewer and fewer.

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For over a month, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. I get phones with 4 digits. The landline does not ring and I find “3 missed calls” 0601-0520-0205. I delete them of course. But I don’t understand.

How to do? Is there anyone having the same problem?

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Most of the time, you just need to reverse the trend and make it your turn to ask questions. Where are you calling from? what is your main telephone number and what is your website?

And then, the caller hangs up!!

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Such manipulations were not possible with analog, but with digital. I get a lot of calls with 077, most of the time I can’t answer them and when I call the number back I get the announcement that the number is invalid. The filter won’t help either, it shouldn’t be possible to display a different phone number than the one you’re calling from.

Show original language (German)