Are we losing the war against automatic diallers?
Posted October 25, 2012 4:50 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Chances are if you own a cell phone, you have had a call from an automatic dialler pretending to be a legitimate company like WestJet or Canadian Tire, telling you you have won something.
We may simply be losing the fight against these kinds of scams.
Robert Palmer with WestJet says there isn’t much that can be done, other than be cautious.
Auto-diallers have been calling our cell-phones for years, and they pretend to be a well-known company like Costco or London Drugs and start off with something like “We understand you’re a WestJet customer, ” Their goal is to find out if you have a credit card, and they will eventually tell you you could win something and try to get your financial information.
Palmer says even though it may seem legitimate, it’s not.
“It’s foolish to give your credit card information to someone that you don’t know, you don’t trust and you don’t have any kind of prior relationship with,” says Palmer.
He says nothing can be done about it because it’s not possible to trace the numbers, but often the calls are coming from companies outside of North America, and again he stresses just don’t trust these calls.
Shawn Hall with Telus says the software used by the auto-diallers use allows people to call a massive group of phone numbers, some will connect and some won’t. He says it’s not necessarily that your cell phone number is being given out to anyone.
