Monthly ‘salary’aly’ of f Talktalk scammers in India

Talktalk has warned its UK customers to be aware of scams in the wake of startling revelations that they are being targeted en masse by a huge fraud network in India.

Three former scammers spoke to undercover BBC reporters, claiming that up to 60 staff work in shifts across two call centres. Each scammer can earn up to £120 a month.

They showed the reporters a script they were provided that’s designed to convince Talktalk customers they are calling from the company.

The scammer then claims that the customer’s PC is infected, and to fix this they urgently need to remotely install software.

If the scammer is provided access to the PC, they then download malware on to it. Once that’s done, they tell the customer that they are entitled to compensation, and ask them to sign into their bank account. At this point another team of scammers strike, using the malware to steal money from the victim’s bank account.

The criminal operation appears to be unrelated to the massive attack Talktalk suffered in 2015, when hackers stole the details of 157,000 customers.

Instead, it’s alleged that the scams can be traced back to Talktalk outsourcing some of its call centres to the Calcutta office of Indian IT cocompany Wipro.

An anonymous source in Calcutta claims that a gang of fraudsters obtained data that three Wipro employees were arrested for selling last year.

In response, Talktalk said it was aware of the scams, and that it launched its Beat The Scammers campaign ( www.talktalk group.com/ beatthescammers) to help protect customers.

It claims that its network blocks “over 90 million scam and nuisance calls a month”.

The BBC said that the two companies named by the whistleblowers denied any wrongdoing.