I am not nsure if this is new or not but yesterday I received a call that started with the usual, "Is that Mr. Gra-hamm? "
To which I replied, "That depends who you are and why you are calling."
"I'm from the Telephone Preference Service, calling about stopping unsolicited calls".
"Oh, " I said, "Well, I already have the system for doing that and am about to install it".
He hung up without another word.
~~~
As I typed that the 'phone rang. Silent one. Usually they drop out after a few seconds but this lasted for what seemed a full minute before giving up with me saying nothing beyond my initial "Hello?" . I do that to waste their money (I hope!).
Then something really weird happened.
I rang 1471 a few minutes later, expecting a "With-held", apparently-spoofed or obviously foreign number.
It wasn't. The quoted number was my own!
Next I found a1571 message, claiming from BT, that my e-mail account had been closed but not giving any details. There could be above-board. I had for some reason set up a secondary BTInternet account a year or so ago but used it so rarely BT genuinely did close it as disused within the last 6 months. It sent me an official e-mail saying so.
The odd thing about that call was the originating number. It was only about 6 digits long and began with 6. I forget the rest and have deleted it.
It's now 10:26 (goes back to insert missing colon, as I am not that old). The phone is still telling me my own number rang me at 10:10 – so I tried the reply button. This elicited a recording saying "Sorry. To access [sic] voice-mail you need…" I hung up.
So what the heck had been going on?
Had a scam attempt (the silent call) co-incided with BT trying to call me genuinely but from a strange service number?
Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 12/05/2021 10:34:08