Yesterday I got an odd phone call that sounded like a credit card company that was trying to confirm something with me.  I just activated a credit card that day, so I did not think much of it … but a few things did not add up; I was smelling a scam.
First the recorded voice and the connection was very poor quality.  The phone number was pretty odd as well.  First they asked me to confirm my name.  I did so. Then they asked for my zip code for security purposes.  Then they said, “and now again for security purposed provide your”…  then I hung up. It was a scam.
But here is odd part.  This morning I get an email saying `they` the scammers, tried to call me yesterday but were unable to complete the call.  Again nothing identifying the company, the source url was junk letters and the links were junk. Trashed it.
But this is what is news worthy.  The idea of combining phone calls and email address to perform scams.  How is this done?  I’m not sure how they got my business number and my email address together, but given the information out there, its not all that hard. With more and more text to voice services and VoIP service that can call phones directly, it only makes sense that scammers are learning to combine what information they know and use that to bait you into giving out more information through a combination of different communication technologies.
The best way to protect yourself is anytime anyone contacts you and wants any personal information; stop and recheck that you know exactly who they are and have some way to verify it. Just because they have some information that is correct is no longer a value way to know who someone is.
Be careful out there. Its getting more and more difficult to spot a spammer.