Whistle-blowers from a call centre in India have alerted TalkTalk of a scam targeting the telecom’s giants customers
TalkTalk have warned their customers to be on alert for scammers who are trying to gain access to peoples computers by claiming to be TalkTalk representatives. According to 3 whistle-blowers from India, they were hired by two front-companies set up by a gang of professional fraudsters. It is apparent that the two companies have call centres in two cities in India with as many as 60 employees working shifts in each office, calling TalkTalk customers and attempting to install malware onto their computers that can potentially steal any saved online bank information.
Although it is not possibly to independently verify the whistle-blowers claims, the sources have provided detailed accounts of the scammers tactics. Photo’s of the script provided to the employees have been sent, and the virus being installed onto TalkTalk customers computers has been named. TalkTalk have matched the virus to one they identified as a dangers program and to be watched out for in a scam call.
In October 2015, TalkTalk were hit by a large scale cyber-attack but appears to be unrelated to the Indian fraud. However it is believed that the scam is linked to problems in a company hired by TalkTalk. Back in 2011, TalkTalk hired one of India’s largest IT service companies as one of their call-centres. Only last year were there 3 employees from that company arrested on suspicion of selling TalkTalk customer data, allegedly the same customer data being used by the criminal gang.
The whistle-blowers all claim to have not known about the scam until recently, they say that once the software is installed everything is left to the people hidden in a seperate room who claim to be the “IT Support Technicians”. The whistle-blowers believe that the virus gives the “technicians” full control of a customers computer and allows them to access and gain customers confidential information.
We urge everyone to aware of any calls like this whether you are a TalkTalk customer or not. Many scams like this are out there falsely claiming to be from large organisations in order to get confidential information from you.