Public Mobile hacked??

[Nella1]

has anyone been getting public mobile calls from Canada Revenue? or texts saying a refund has been made or a delivery item is stuck and used your phone number as tracking code or account number? These have been happening today, at least for us! Has Public Mobile been hacked?

[ace_phone]

When a scammer, or even just a company doing legit cold calling, uses a robo dialer, they can do more than just dial numbers. One of the favourite things to do is make their calls appear to come from a "trusted" number, so that it has more chance of being picked up. So you might see "Burnaby Hospital" for instance.

[softech]

@Nella1  I did that sometime too why i find i am lonely and need someone to talk to.. or yell.. LoL

btw, another common calls .. but not scammers.. are Duct Cleaning, they like to do cold calling so much these days... 

[gpixel]

@Nella1 nope you did the right thing. press that button and f UC k em up! that's how you do it. waste their time and they won't waste their time on you. good job! if the same thing happens in the future, do it again! 

as for the text messages, just block and delete. it's phishing for your personal information. also disable automatically receive MMS. those can potentially be infected with malware

[TheGx]

@Nella1 :Now that it's clear that Public Mobile was not calling you and has not been hacked, you should mark this thread you created as solved by clicking the accepted solution button above one of the replies posted here - doing so well help others in future that have similar questions as you did.

[Nella1]

Spoiler

Thank you everyone for responding so quickly. Much appreciated. Unfortunately I'm running my business through my cellphone so I really need to answer every call or ...have them go on voice mail! Just had a aha moment 🙂  

One day I had received so many robocalls calls that I finally answered one. I pretended that the call was on the air....I was giggling and he got so mad that he started swearing. I hung up. I know we shouldn't 'press the button to be connected' but it did feel good to get them all riled up for a change

[totalUser]

They send it to masses.

They check which company owns the number too, my number belongs to Rogers and i get so many scams pretending to come from my provider, they don't know it was ported to pm. I once checked their number and it belonged to Bell, they wouldn't even bother to try to scam me from Rogers number, like Rogers is gonna be paying to Bell for their cellphones

[HALIMACS]

@Nella1 

Please do not EVER answer a call from a number or person you do not know (in my case - if you're not in my contacts I don't answer).  Ideally, also never respond to a text from anyone you don't know as well.

By doing so, the senders (who are usually scammers) are able to mark your number as a valid one which will be answered - thus you may find these types of unwanted contact attempts will increase.   And no one wants that.

If they leave a message, they may be worthy of your time to check the voicemail - if not, they likely weren't and they will eventually not focus as much on your number.

[TheGx]

@Nella1 :Ok, just remember that anyone can claim over the phone that they from Public or from anywhere, so that don't mean anything don't believe what strangers say over phone.

In any event, these scam calls depend on your and anyone picking up phone when they call so when you see strange number just press hang up button.

[Nella1]

"When you say Public Mobile calls do you mean calls that have caller display as from Public Mobile?"

My husband got that. He received a 'robot call' from a 270 number--that's pretty much a regular cell number around here. He pressed the number they said and someone answered saying that they're Public Mobile

[will13am]

@Nella1 , these spam calls from the CRA, duct cleaning, etc. are totally random.  They probably do robo calling.  There is little you can do other than to block the incoming number.  This only works for a little while as the spammers spoof their numbers and will change it from time to time.  

[argon007]

just ignore and delete it.

that is the solution. 

[TheGx]

When you say Public Mobile calls do you mean calls that have caller display as from Public Mobile? For scammers to get your name and phone number randomly is not surprising as they can easily get it from many ways if you use other apps or social media such as youtube gmail facebook and twitter etc.

That's why everyone should be very careful about giving information when creating account and signing up online etc, and look into using only trusted privacy apps such as Duck Duck Go and Signal Private Messenger etc and promote and support the worldwide privacy movement.

[Lieux]

@Nella1  Unfortunately those SMS or calls are not only with public mobile but with others carriers too.☹️