Scams

[bratman91]

For the silentone:  I am not sure what you mean with this statement “Then do what email does, have a 'white list '” but, whatever you have in mind, is clearly not working for you as you say that you are getting invitations to invest in bitcoin. 

Many email providers try to filter out scam and other such nuisances, and place them in your “Junk” folder but, if you have never found a legitimate message in this folder nor received a scam email that managed to escape the filter, then you are rare if not unique. 

Scam emails generally include a great deal information about the sender (not always reliable as the sender can be spoofed), the subject, routing metadata, the formatting and the text itself. An email with the initial salutation of “Hello my friend” and the statement that the originator is the daughter of a dead African dictator who needs to get a vast cache of money out of the country is a dead giveaway  but, with a phone call, the initial connection or attempt at connection conveys provides comparatively  little data with which an intelligent filter can work.

[thesilentone]

Despite one sitting in my BT mailbox. scam emails from BT are not the key issue, scam calls and BT's attitude to them is.

[thesilentone]

What you offer as a compression is nether fair or relevant. When buying a car or a knife to perpetrate a crime and there is only one car garage, and one shop that sells knives, it would not be long before I was rumbled and arrested.

[thesilentone]

I think you miss the point, it is BT who is allowing there network to be used for illegal scamming, of which I assume it is mainly the older and vulnerable who are the most likely victims. For this, BT has a part to play to help stop this , and act. How do you really think the call interception system would help the average older person living alone ?

Denial will be BT's downfall, as many are suffering.

[Andy_N]

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@thesilentonewrote:

I think you miss the point, it is BT who is allowing there network to be used for illegal scamming, of which I assume it is mainly the older and vulnerable who are the most likely victims. For this, BT has a part to play to help stop this , and act. How do you really think the call interception system would help the average older person living alone ?

Denial will be BT's downfall, as many are suffering.

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No-one is missing the point.

What you are saying has been going on for years - and it's worldwide not just BT. If it was easy to stop it, then all the telecoms companies around the world would have done so.

[gg30340]

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@thesilentone wrote:

What you offer as a compression is nether fair or relevant. When buying a car or a knife to perpetrate a crime and there is only one car garage, and one shop that sells knives, it would not be long before I was rumbled and arrested.

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It is relevant. There are hundreds if not thousands of telephone  and broadband companies in the world and the perpetrator of the "crime" ie the scammer, is invariably not a customer of BT and as such has not purchased anything from BT therefore BT have no control of the scammer which is pretty much the same with drink driver using one of the many car manufacture's cars or a murderer using one of the many knife manufacturers knifes.  

As you would appear to have no idea how the world wide telecom and broadband system works and to what extent BT along with all the other phone and broadband companies work to prevent scammers and how the scammers can circumvent security measures there is little point in this thread continuing.

[thesilentone]

I'm afraid you are clutching at straws. If you want to use that as a comparison, then lets suggest their are many car garages but they all have to go only one fuel station. Once again, the fuel station holds the cards and controls the fuel distribution.

The world of telecoms is no different to banking or any other mega customer platform, the difference is, BT chooses to sit on it's hands, and is still suffering a very, very bad case of Monopolyitus !!

You must be more proactive against fraud, or your failing customer service will be your downfall.

[gg30340]

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.  Keeping with your analogy about there only being one petrol station! there is more than one broadband and telecom provider, there are over two hundred providers in the UK alone.

BT and the other providers do not sit on their hands and do nothing, you should have perhaps done some research before posting your groundless claims.

These links are just some of the mountain of information about what is being done and what the individual such as your self can to so as to not become a victim of scams.

 Calling Features | Landlines | BT

BT Scam Calls | Report a Scam Call | BT Help

BT Call Protect: Free service to crackdown on nuisance calls | BT

Nuisance calls: phone services that can help - Ofcom

Stop getting nuisance calls and texts - Citizens Advice

Just so that you are aware, BT is not a monopoly. As I have already pointed out there are over two hundred providers in the UK. 

Anyway, as I said it is pointless carrying on with this thread. 

[bratman91]

“You must be more proactive against fraud”.  The primary responsibility for being more pro-active against fraud is YOU! You have been advised how to prevent almost all scam phone calls by using a phone with a call blocker - they are not expensive and, for example, the BT8600 (they may no longer be available from BT but there are other sources and there are plenty of alternatives) is a pretty capable phone in its own right. If you do not want to do this, then you must accept the consequential annoyance of scam calls. BT, like all other email providers around the world, do not have access to an easy solution.

You imply that the average old person would not be able to operate a phone with a call blocker. First of all, you clearly haven’t done much to find out more about such phones and, secondly, the average old person is quite capable of operating them. Some might find, or think, that it is beyond them but few old people do not have family, friends, contacts, carers or neighbours who can help them. 

Don’t forget thatBT are providing a service and any additional overheads will be passed on to the customer. The sort of solution that you seem to be after is not possible but, if it was, would likely cost a small fortune to implement. Who would pay for this ultimately? Please do not say that there is a quick, easy or cheap solution - there isn’t!

[RobbieMac]

Hi guys,

Having read through the comments on this thread I feel that the question has been answered numerous times.

@thesilentone The information the guys have provided you on here is accurate.  We realise that scams are a real thing and if we could do something rest assured, we certainly would.  However, it's a worldwide issue and something we simply have no control over.  There are ways to combat it and @gg30340 has included some useful links in their recent post on here.  I would suggest given them a read and deciding what would work best in your scenario.

As the question has been answered and the discussion is starting to move off topic, I'm going to lock the thread.

All the best,

Robbie