Pass to heading

What to do if you get a call from scammers Printable version

Last update: 16.03.2023

Scam - is a type of theft of someone else's property or acquisition of rights to someone else's property through deception or abuse of trust for which criminal liability is provided under Article 190 of the Criminal Code of the Republic Kazakhstan.

The most common types of scam are as follows:

  • vishing: the type of scam with elements of social engineering is aimed at stealing personal information of citizens by phone;
  • phishing: set of methods that allow deceiving a user and forcing him/her disclosing confidential information about himself/herself and a payment card.

The main goal of scammers is to seize personal and payment data of citizens, gain access to their bank accounts and money.

The main schemes of telephone scammers:

1. Scammers call a potential victim's mobile phone and introduce themselves as employees of banks and other financial organizations. Scammers use software such as SIP telephony for calling, which allows duplicating subscriber numbers of Kazakhstani financial institutions. During the conversation, scammers report an attempt to debit funds from your card and ask you to change your password in your personal account, provide a new password and SMS code. Scammers can even offer their services for remote connection to your gadget to quickly resolve the issue. To do this, they ask you to download AnyDesk and TeamViewer applications. When gaining access to your accounts, scammers can withdraw all the money and even apply for a loan in your name.

Tip: If you received a call allegedly from bank employees, immediately stop the conversation. Note, a real bank employee will never call you to clarify your personal data. A bank has your complete financial profile. This information is valuable only to scammers!

2. Scammers make a call to a potential victim's mobile phone and impersonate themselves as law-enforcement officers. They can tell that a complaint has been received against you or your relatives, friends and an investigation is underway under Article 190 Part 3 – Large-scale scam. You urgently need to come to a police station. To resolve an issue in a fast way, until an application is issued, you need to transfer "some amount" to a certain account. Usually, it is quite an impressive amount but on the other hand, it is not so unaffordable that it could not be paid quickly. Primarily, the victims of this scam are elderly people who are ready to give all their money to help their loved ones. An additional stress factor is usually unavailability of a subscriber for calls, thus scammers manage to find out this too.

Scammers are well acquainted with human psychology, they speak quickly and confidently, use professional terms, sometimes apply pressure, rush to make a decision, threaten, often include sounds in the background that mimic the work of a busy office or police station, etc.

Tip: If you received a call allegedly from law-enforcement agencies, do not panic. Ask in which police department a potential suspect is located, what article is imputed to a person, when an act was committed, whether the assistance of a lawyer was provided and how to contact him/her. You should also make a call to a hotline of an organization from which you allegedly received a call: Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan or district police department. 

3. By applying state-of-the-art technologies, scammers use voice robots that "communicate" with people according to certain scenarios or audio recordings. Scam bots can call, for example, on behalf of a police department, inform a person that there is a fine and ask to press "1" for detailed information.

After that, another voice "assistant" is connected and warns that the information is super confidential and in order for a person to confirm his/her identity, it is necessary to answer a number of questions, among which there may be questions about a payment data. No matter what tools scammers use, they want to get important confidential information from you: IIN, ID number, full card details, SMS code. It is important for scammers to get clear phrases from you: "Yes" and "I confirm". To do this, bots can ask questions such as: "Do you live in Almaty?", "Have you made payments within the last 24 hours?", "Do you want to collect your prize?", "Do you hear me well?", "Do you confirm this information?" and so on.

Tip: It is not difficult to recognize a voice robot (spammer). End the conversation and block the number. If you still decide to continue "communicating" with a bot, then be careful, when talking use "Hello" instead of the word "Yes", for example. You can also use ambiguous words: "Uh", "Uh-huh", "Mhm" and so on, this distracts the algorithm of fraudulent automations. If possible, conduct a conversation using the state language.

Basic security rules for citizens not to become a victim of scam

Never tell anyone:

  • Password from your personal account in the Internet banking or mobile application.
  • Your personal data, your bank card details, card expiration date, CVC/CVV code (three digits on the back of a bank card, card authentication code), code word and balance of funds.
  • SMS code to confirm an operation being performed: payment, transfer, etc.

Be careful!

A lot of useful materials on the topic are published on the financial literacy media portal Fingramota.kz in the "Beware of scammers" section.

Help
Help
Total visitors per month:
Total visitors for yesterday:
Now on the portal:
URL:
Error:
Comment:

Спасибо, информация об ошибке принята.

Извините, в данный момент информация об ошибке не может быть обработана.
Попробуйте позже.