In the past I have told you about scammers increasingly setting up phony websites that appear to be for customer service or tech support of many of the companies with which we do business.  Often the scammers either purchase an ad to appear at the top of a search engine search or they manipulate the algorithms used by Google and other search engines to make their phony customer service number appear high on a search.

A variation on this scam occurs also where scammers purchase telephone numbers that are a single digit off of the legitimate phone numbers for many companies’ tech support or customer support in order to take advantage of common consumer misdials. A Scamicide reader had an issue with his Sprint account and called his customer support phone number where he was told that he was eligible for a special promotion and a gift card if he just provided some personal information.  It was at this point that the savvy Scamicide reader realized he had mistakenly called the wrong number which was merely a digit off from the correct Sprint customer support number.  He hung up and avoided being scammed.

Others have not been so lucky and have provided personal information that leads to identity theft after misdialing a customer support number.

TIPS

The best place to look for a telephone number for customer support or tech support is right on your bill or the legitimate website of the company.     Even when you do call legitimate tech support or customer service telephone numbers take extra care to make sure that you are dialing correctly and not calling a clever scammer who may have purchased a telephone number that is a digit off of the correct phone number in an attempt to ensnare people who may misdial the number.

Also, remember you can’t trust Alexa or Siri to provide you with the correct number because they only access the information appearing at the top of a search engine search.  As I indicated earlier, often those numbers are fake numbers put their by scammers.

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