The Frightening Fake Kidnapping Call And How To Protect Yourself

[tao]

A few Sunday's ago I received the most frightening phone call I have ever gotten as a parent.  I answered to a young persons voice screaming for mom to help. Then an angry man claiming to be from a Mexican mafia told me my child was in the wrong place at the wrong time, saw something he shouldn't have and if I didn't bring all the money from my bank account to a designated meeting place they would slash his neck. This man knew my name, my phone number, the city I lived in and my child's name.

 

I was not aware of virtual kidnapping scams and as the man continued to raise his voice with escalating threats, I paced my house trying to get a handle on exactly what was happening. I continued to press him to get answers or talk to the child. After about 20 minutes the caller abruptly hung up. I immediately called both of my children. One answered the phone, the other did not. I panicked again and called the police department. The operator calmly informed me that I had been scammed. I was. My other child called me back a few minutes later.

 

It was a relief to know my children were safe, but every minute I was on the phone with the scammer my heart and mind raced with the worst.

 

Sadly, the virtual kidnapping scam in on the rise. " One in every 10 American adults (22M people) have been victimized by a phone scam in the past 12 months, with the average victim losing an average of $430,  that's nearly a 60% increase since last year's survey," said Tom Hsieh, VP of Growth at Truecaller.

 

There is so much public information on the internet and social media sites it is fairly easy for scammers find you and me.  They look for people who are known to have a child in a certain age range and whose phone numbers are public information.  When they call they know your name, your child's name, your cellphone number, and the time range during the day that you are separated from your child.

 

To know whether you are on a call with a scammer check the caller ID information, says Ettore Fantin-Yusta, Director of Marketing at Securable.io. "If the phone number is not blocked and the area code is not from nearby, credibility is lost.  During the call, one should listen for typical scam call characteristics including aggressiveness, a sense of urgency, fake screaming, and instructions to not call police.  These scams all rely on one's emotion, as we don't think straight when in a state of panic."

 

The best way to stop the scammer right on the phone is to text the supposed abductee to see if they are okay. "Depending on the relationship you may have with your relative, there are  various mobile phone applications setup with GPS to track their whereabouts and they track yours vice-versa," says Robert Siciliano Personal Security Expert and CEO of IDTheftSecurity.com

 

One can avoid being an easy target by limiting the amount of information publicly available.  If your social profiles have weak privacy settings, the scammer could access pictures of your child and describe them to you in extreme detail.  These details build up credibility during these calls.

 

If you are like me and experience a virtual kidnapping call alert your community.  Scammers may be targeting your school districts and regions.  File a complaints with the FTC. Post your account on social media alerting the public or even get on local news.

 

Awareness is the first and best step towards prevention.

 

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[straycat19]

The good thing is that the majority of these calls can be traced, thanks to the rollback of security implementations made during the Obama misadministration.  The majority of ISPs now keep records, DNS records are kept, and since most VPNs have DNS leaks even those aren't safe.  So if they are using Skype or something similar it is easy to track them and when using the exigent circumstance law no warrant is required to obtain tracking data. Most of these are done using Skype because they think they can hide in the internet, whereas they can't using cell or landline, regardless of what number spoofing they do on caller ID.  People really have to be stupid to pull these stunts.  The problem is when they are caught it very seldom makes the local news where it happened so people don't realize that these scammers are being caught.  If this happens to you make sure you have someone contact the local authorities while you are still on the phone with them, if possible, even if you have determined it is a scam. Let's keep our friends and family safe.