On Thursday I received the following message on my phone.
The message reads:
WELLS FARGO ALERT: Your CARD starting with 4259 has been DEACTIVATED. Please call 650-443-5306.
That was immediately suspicious. Neither the sender, (650) 739-9027, nor the phone number to call, were 800 numbers. Also usually one refers to a credit card with its last four digits, not the first four ones. The sender is registered in Palo Alto, and the number to call is in Millbrae.
I called the sender, and there is just a message saying that the voicemail is not activated. When calling (650) 443-5306, I got a somewhat lo-fi voicemail pretending to be from Wells Fargo and asking to punch my credit card number.
Obviously a scam to get credit cards number, social security number, and the like.
You’ve been warned.
A Clever scam, since most people don’t know that all Wells Fargo credit card numbers start with those digits. Not sure how to report it. Probably sent to random cellphone numbers.
Yep, I got the same thing about a week ago, except it was from a different number.
I figured it was a scam, but it was frustrating because a) spam to my mobile costs money (and I think it’s illegal in the states), and b) unlike something like Gmail, which has a very good spam-reporting infrastructure, I couldn’t figure out how to tell AT&T about it.
I think it’s possible that the source phone # can also be spoofed, i.e. the phone numbers reported as the source might just be innocent bystanders…
It would help others hell of a lot, if these scam phone numbers are reported at http://www.scamcallfighters.com (Directory of scam phone numbers)