Did I nearly get scammed?

[#1]

I just had a call from someone claiming to be from BT. I had a similar one the other day telling me that multiple people are using my WiFi "illegally", and just put it down as a scam call. The call this morning came from a phone number that appeared to be in Japan (started 01181) and they told me that people were illegally using my Wi-fi, accessing my online banking and so on.

They wanted to talk to me because I'm the BT account holder, sent me a convincing email that looks as if it's from btcomms@info.bt.com, containing a PIN. I didn't give them the PIN, and pointed out that I haven't got a BT account. Their response was quite muffled, but it sounded something like "BT are the motherboard who run all the internet connections for everyone else". I'm convinced she said motherboard as opposed to mother company, that's another thing that made me pause. I pointed out that I thought Openreach did that now, and they're completely separate companies. She phoned me back from an 0208 number, put me through to her supervisor, but he basically said the same thing.

So, did I cunningly foil a plan to take over my PC for nefarious purposes, or would BT have actually been calling me despite me not having a BT account? I had a look at the router and I don't see anything massively concerning in the list of connected devices. 

[#2]

@droopsnoot Both utter and total scams - 'BT' nor 'Openreach' communicate directly with end users.

[#3]

Those were quite big alarm bells for me. I looked the phone numbers up on these "who called me" web sites, and found nothing at all. The fact that the same person purportedly called from two separate continents within a couple of minutes was another. Email is very convincing, I can see how people might get taken in.

Cheers, sounds like I've done the right thing.

[#4]

Had a similar call from "openreach" a while back insisting that my BT internet connection was slow !

I pointed out to them that I was with another ISP , with no connection/speed issues, and that they should be aware of that if they were Openreach.

Their response was that Openreach were "The mother of all internet providers" 😉

Interesting that these scammers use the  same phraseology  , clearly using similar scripts.

[#5]

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@droopsnoot wrote:

I just had a call from someone claiming to be from BT. I had a similar one the other day telling me that multiple people are using my WiFi "illegally", and just put it down as a scam call. The call this morning came from a phone number that appeared to be in Japan (started 01181) and they told me that people were illegally using my Wi-fi, accessing my online banking and so on.

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Japanese codes start 0081. Whenever I get an unexpected call like this I just tell them that I don't take cold calls. If I'm concerned that it may have been genuine then I'd ring the company direct.