Caller: (02) 6729 3474

Answered phone to (02) 6729 3474, was an automated message saying it was Telstra and that they had been trying to get in touch ( they hadn’t), as my landline and bigpond was going to be cut off as NBN was going to be coming in to effect. Actually sounded pretty legit at first so when it instructed me to press 1 to be put in touch with a technician, I did. A foreign accented man answered saying ‘Telstra how can I help you’, to which I said I didn’t know, as it was you who called me. He said you must have pressed 1 to the message, what message did you receive, and I said something about my landline being cut off as NBN being connected. He responded in a concerned tone ‘ oooh that means you will need to back up your internet because you are going to lose any access for at least 72 hours, but as compensation, we are offering a backup connection. You just need to do this on your computer or laptop, and then you won’t lose anything.’ I was then realizing of course his information did not make sense and realised it must be a scam. The next comment after I told him I didn’t have a computer or laptop, just an ipad and IPhone, confirmed it was a scam ‘ oh if you don’t have a laptop or computer we will have to send a technician to your house, but it will cost you $2.25 cents and you really don’t want that. But if we have to as you don’t have a computer then you will need to pay the $2.25 by credit card for the technician to come with his laptop’ lol. I said but why would I lose access as we mainly use hotspot on our phones anyway, rarely rely on the landline modem. To which he said but if you don’t have a modem and working landline you won’t have any internet will you. Realizing he didn’t get that iPhone data doesn’t rely solely on landline modem WiFi, I said nah we have a Telstra business manager and they always have these things added to our bill if there’s an issue. He said oh you can’t do that for this, you need to give your credit card for the technician to come.
So I said I’ll get in touch with our Telstra business manager to sort out for us.
Scam, but sounds really legit to begin with. I can see how a person not tech savvy could be easily scammed by the female recorded voice message (even sounded quite similar to Telstra voice recordings)saying their phone and modem is going to be cut off would make them press 1 as instructed and potentially follow right through with getting duped. Especially during these bush fires when we certainly don’t want to be out of communication. Low lifes