对不起，此内容只适用于美式英文。

Dear tellows-fellows,

Superficial knowledge can be dangerous, we all know that. In terms of telephone advertising and fraud, it can cost you a lot of money and nerves! Therefore, today we present you the most common myths regarding telephone advertising, telephone fraud and possible manipulations on tellows and clearify them.

1. Telephone scam only affects older people

As soon as one hears of telephone scam, one has more in mind the 93-year-old Mary-Ann, who was tricked by fraudsters, than the 26-year-old computer science student Stella. The fact is: Fraudsters often try to scam older target groups since they tend to be less careful and easier to be fooled. They are not always informed about the latest phone scam tricks, so a call from an alleged family member or the bank employee can turn into a costly trap.

However, this does not mean that everyone else can think themselves safe. Since there are many types of fraud, the victims differ. There are even tricks that mainly lead to success for the fraudsters among younger people. Such an example would be the Microsoft support scam, which targets access to sensitive data from their victims on the phone. According to Microsoft, this stitch is particularly successful in the age group of 18 to 34 years.

2. As long as I don’t give out any data about myself, I can’t lose any money

Unfortunately, this is also a misconception. It is true that you should never reveal your data on the phone, but there are other ways to get your money. Ping calls pose a great risk here. In this case, the fraudsters ring only a few seconds to provoke a recall. If this is done, a high fee will be charged, as the numbers are often foreign and you will be drawn into a waiting loop that can cost you a lot of money per minute.

3. I signed up on the do-not-call list, so cold calls cannot affect me

Another misconception that (unfortunately) is not quite true. In general telephone advertising (Cold Calls) is legal and if you registered on TPS or expressed your wish to not be contacted anymore, the company is not allowed to call you again. However, it is also true that countless companies do not comply with this. Apparently, the high fines of £500,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office do not deter this. In 2017-2018 over 2.7 Billion unsolicited calls, texts and emails were reported in the UK.

4. Phone fraud no longer exists today

Not only telephone advertising, but also telephone fraud continues to be practiced. On tellows, users report cases of telephone fraud every day in a variety of ways. In our annual report, we recorded that in 2019 users most commonly have been harassed by cellular fraudsters. Fraudsters pretend to be employees of renowned telecommunications industries in order to access data.

5. Reporting phone numbers is no use – the fraudsters simply change the number

This is not necessarily true. You may report all phone scams to Action Fraud, the reporting centre for all kinds of frauds. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau can then investigate these scams and take action. On tellows you can share your knowledge to warn other users before they can even fall for the fraud. Many people google phone numbers while they take calls if they are suspicious about the caller purpose or they do research afterwards. You can also use the comment feature to exchange experiences with other victims. 1-2 reviews are already sufficient to question a call and help someone else.

6. Anyone can post reviews and comments to tellows without being questioned

Fortunately, in this case we are talking about a misconception. First of all, every person can upload a rating or a comment, but the ratings and comments will be checked continuously by our automatic spam check system and the tellows team. Comments about discrimination, insults, defamation or similar will be deleted by us immediately. Of course, it can happen that we overlook such a rating once, so we are grateful for any advice from the community! If a company wrongly feels badly valued, we will also examine it in detail.

7. Everyone can see my contact details on tellows

Our goal is to protect you from phone advertising and fraud. We are therefore never interested in collecting data and names from private individuals. The tellows database initially includes every possible telephone number, i.e. as soon as someone enters a number combination on tellows, it is recognized as a potential telephone number. But no data about this number will be available without further comments.

You can see that telephone fraud and telephone advertising are still very present topics and it is therefore important that we act against them together. It is therefore best to check every suspicious number first on tellows.co.uk.

Either on our website or with the help of the app for iPhone or Android you can get insights on suspicious callers.

We hope we could help you with this post! If you can think of a myth about the topic, feel free to write us a comment.

You tellows Team