That too could be played when people were still using landlines. It is obsolete with cell phones.
If a landline call was hung up at the receiving end but not at the calling end, it took about 30 seconds to time out and disconnect. Probably a feature that allows the callee to hang up and pick up again on a different extension phone.
So the scammer would call; you would rightly hang up and call the 1-800 number printed on your credit card. Only you were "calling" through the scammer's fake telco dialing sequence and... still be online with the scammer.
> So the scammer would call; you would rightly hang up and call the 1-800 number printed on your credit card. Only you were "calling" through the scammer's fake telco dialing sequence and... still be online with the scammer.
Wouldn't the scammer also have to play a dial tone on the line (and eventual ring) to keep the ruse going?
Maybe it's because I'm from a country that is full of 2FA scams exactly like this (particularly for WhatsApp), so I could immediately tell it was a scam, but I didn't find this convincing at all. If the person actively reached out to you on your phone number, it doesn't make sense that they would require you to further authenticate yourself
Financial institutions in the US do this constantly. They call you, and then they ask you for stuff like the last four of your SSN and what loans you might have with them to prove that they're speaking to the right person. They act surprised when you don't want to answer because they called you.
Yes, the client could be a "sim swap" victim, and in that case you would be talking to an attacker. So the identity validation can be useful in that case.
The real problem with all this is the fact that banks underhire their customer support. There should be laws on wait times for essential services to be less than 5 minutes. The fact that you have to wait for hours at times to talk to your bank or the IRS is bogus.
