Recruiters = Scammers?

Parcel Farce

Today I received a strange phone call. Someone whom I forgot the name from claimed to be from parcelforce, and told me there was a parcel waiting to be delivered to me, but for security reasons, in case I wasn’t able to receive it myself, he needed me to give me “two security names”…

Now, I’m aware those sort of phone calls are simply dumb stupid recruiters trying to obtain names of people inside the company, and I could well have hung up straight away, but I was keen to dig a bit more!

You see, the problem with receiving phone calls at work is that when it’s not an internal call, and the caller goes through the main Betfair phone number, the policy is to forward the call to the person they named. Fair enough, I guess our lovely receptionists would not be able to handle the amount of calls if they had to verify the caller every time. But that’s the loophole through which many of these scam calls arrive, and they more or less always follow the same format.

You’re are your desk, your phone rings initially with the caller id ‘reception’, and switches to your phone provider’s name as soon as you pick up. That’s a first sign that the caller has masked his phone number. Clue #1 that’s a fishy call!

Then, the caller pretends to be from a well known delivery company, or anything else that you *might* expect in your life (like, errr, a parcel…) and tries to confuse you with security procedures you might be scared to not comply with. I’ve written it this way so you REALLY read it and see how clever they are! Confusion and scaremongering is their way to get you to do what they want. As far as I know, Parcelforce drivers never give a monkey about who you are, what the parcel says and sometimes don’t even care about the address (don’t gun me down here, I speak from numerous very bad experiences). So I really doubt they would go through the hassle about asking for any extra precaution on delivering parcels. Clue #2.

He was prepared: asking if he could give me a tracking number or details from where the parcel came from, or even leave a calling card so I’d pick it up later on, he replied he could not tell me for “security reasons” and that it could be a gift or something I’m not expecting (yeah, right…), and that the parcel had to be given to me or one “named” person only and a card could not be left. Clue #3.

After a bit of chatter, it became clear that his act was not usually going so far as someone resisting as he literally said “Look, you can solve this very easily by giving me two security names and I won’t bother you anymore”. Then a bit later: “If you don’t, you’ll be fined a £20 fee for collection of the parcel.” So I can collect my parcel then? =) Clue #4

At this point I had enough to play with this guy and hung up.

• I wasn’t expecting anything
• I don’t know of anyone who would send me something to my work address without telling me
• I don’t know of parcel force being so “secure” now (what a joke that would be!)
• I really wonder why names (and only names, he didn’t ask for phones, emails etc…) are so important…

Is this about “networking”? That’s a pretty hard way to do it! Although I trash daily recruiters emails about stupid job offers that don’t even match my skills. Is this a larger problem of identity theft or other obscure practices? Maybe, I don’t know.

What’s for sure is that using the useless lazy parcel force as a cover is as stupid as trying to put jam on the underside of a toast thinking it would stick: You’d need a darn THICK jam for that!!!

Don’t fall in the trap people!