Comment by hunter2_
12 hours ago
Knowing what numbers are real through an official publication is very good, but it only allows you to place trust in calls you make, not calls you receive, because making calls doesn't involve caller ID, receiving calls does, and caller ID is spoofable.
That's the number one rule though. If someone calls you claiming to be your bank, just say "I'll call you back"
Ask them their name/ last initial, employee ID or unique identifier for the conversation, direct phone number, job title and what location they're based at. Scammers will pretty much always refuse/argue/hang up on this (once I had one start insulting my mother in Hindi when I asked him this). Then call your bank's proper number and verify all of these details.
(But in any case your bank will never call outwards to you, unless you've specifically requested that, which you almost never do.)
Unfortunately my UK banks (and others) DO regularly make calls to me unannounced and demand my ID to 'prove who I am'. They are not scam calls and the callers cannot understand what they are doing wrong. If I'd had more strength in the last round of this stupidity I'd have done a number on them with the regulator. (I used to work in finance and was the director of a regulated financial entity, so I think I'd have a head start.)
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Or, which has worked great for me; just never answer the phone. If people need something they will email or chat. If not then it is not going to be important.
This. If people have a "real" reason to correspond with you they will have no problem making a record of it via a voicemail or text or email or whatever.
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Nowadays, when banks call you here, they allow you to verify the bank is actually calling you with the mobile app - you can see their name and number they're calling you from in the app. Also, you can often verify you're you with the app too, same as any other app authorization, so you don't have to share any details over the phone. I feel like this is a pretty good improvement.
We have an app called bankid. If my bank calls me they'll ask me to open the app to auth, the app shows that the specific bank initiated auth and also says that they called me.
Same app is used to auth to government pages and all kinds of stuff online, even purchases.
That would take nothing to implement. Services like Truecaller already do live caller ID against databases on iOS / Android. All it would take is a sensible register of verified numbers
Several of the bank scammers had their profile verified as the bank in the Truecaller[1].
[1] https://xcancel.com/Abishek_Muthian/status/18063480222902113...
Truecaller can tell you about who a phone number belongs to.
Truecaller cannot accurately tell you whether or not the person calling you from a phone number is actually in control of that phone number.
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