The phone rings and a voice says she is Katie and she’s calling about the accident.
“Go on” I reply assuming this is a scam call.
Again she tells me she’s calling about the car accident.
“Which one” I reply thinking to confuse her as she clearly she has no knowledge of who I am or whether I have recently been in a car accident.
There are about 170,000 road accidents in Great Britain per year where someone is injured and the figure including all minor bumps etc. where no injury occurred must be significantly higher.
Even so, the chances of a scammer getting through to someone who has had an accident recently must be fairly low.
However, even for someone who does drive and has not been involved in an accident recently it is probably confusing when someone calls to talk with you about ‘the accident you were involved in’
What do the scammers want from these calls?
There are various possible motives for them
- Collecting names and contact details for people who have been in accidents, so as to sell that data to insurance companies, car repair businesses etc.
- Standard phishing scams i.e. they try to get as much personal information from you to sell to other spammers and scammers
- A more elaborate con where they pretend to be an insurance company willing to pay you for the accident (but if accepted then they need retainers, pre payments etc., before you can get the cash which of course doesn’t exist)
Do not be taken in by these callers. If someone calls to ask you about any event – then check if they know who you are and dates, locations etc. of the event. Once asked these questions they will likely put the phone down.
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