Receiver up-date scam

Good for you! Clearly a SCAM!

Just want to inform you that these people had the last 4 digit's of my charge card and knew the amount of my monthly bill, I want you to check your employee's as this information could only be known to a employee.

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@joanrcn wrote:

Just want to inform you that these people had the last 4 digit's of my charge card and knew the amount of my monthly bill, I want you to check your employee's as this information could only be known to a employee.

 

 

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Not my employees. I'm just a customer. 

But you might be surprised at how readily this sort of information is available on the dark web. 

Just got off the phone with an obvious scammer.  Phone number appeared to be local to my area (915), but not a commercial number.  Pre-recorded message said that ATT was “moving their satellites” and that my receivers might not be able to receive the transmission and might need to be updated/replaced (and we all know that you update as a download over wi-fi these days—just updated mine a week or so ago).  Press 1 to speak to an agent.  Figured it was a scam, but what the heck, sometimes I like to play along.  Sure enough someone with a very heavy Indian/Pakistani accent in an obvious “boiler room” told me that my receiver may need to be updated and that I needed to turn on my TV “right now” so he could check my system.  It appears he was wanting the RID number and then was most likely going to tell me that I was going to be charged with some outrageous sum for him to “update” my system. I could hardly understand him anyway, and his line was so crappy that most of what he said I never heard, so, I got tired of the whole thing and told him politely that I was not interested and that it was most likely a scam and hung up on him.  He attempted to scare me by telling me that if my system was not updated, I would lose my service within 2-3 days—yeah, right.  Loser!

@SteeltownGal 

Sounds like a scam call, but some clarification on a couple points.

DirecTV boxes are not updated by WiFi. Their software updates come from the satellite trasmission. Info from internet (WiFi or not) is for On Demand, or the new advertisement-style screensaver, only.

DirecTV has started their big shutdown of the MPEG-2 feeds since April 2019. So many customers do legitimately need to replace their boxes as we all need MPEG-4 going forward. But it depends on your exact models (not RID or access card) if that is needed or not. If they are, then call the DirecTV official customer support number. What are the models of each box you have? (just the model numbers as that is not account identifying).

And of course if you do need the MPEG swap, that is no charge as is required to continue using the service. Call saying update is both required and at a cost (software or hardware) is definitely a scam.

I had the same kind of call. No credit info was given (or my correct name) but have my receiver ID information. Will they be able to track anything from online? This is such a nuisance! If these evil people would attempt to work legitimately, they would have more money than what they could steal from my little check. And even in the midst of a pandemic. The person gave me the number 618.224.0089 and actually answered when I called. Then he went into his AT&T voice. When I asked for the main line, he hung up.

No, there no tracking devices in the receivers and the numbers mean nothing to anyone that doesn't have access to DTVs computers.

Just got the same scam myself.  They said the satellite had "moved in my area" and our software needed to be updated.  They also said that an update of the software would keep us from losing TV signal during storms.  I'm a retired senior computer scientist.  I hung up.  Very convincing at the start because they had my address.

Getting your address is the easiest possible thing. Takes about 5 minutes from public records.

I just got the same call on Dec 16, 2020.  In addition to everything listed in previous posts they wanted to know how many TVs I have in the house because it's a per TV charge to stop me from losing programming.  When I told her it wouldn't matter how many TVs are in the house since not all of them are connected to DTV she told me that they would have to know this to prevent the TVs from not working if we were to ever connect them to DTV.  Hmmm.  Makes sense to me!  LOL!!

Scammer is still out there, 7/10/2021. This time they called using 936-4411219 and it registered as Eyemasters. I actually asked the scammer why that would happen if he is from Direct TV/AT&T. I gave up trying to report to AT&T by phone. I kept getting transferred to the wrong number or it would disconnect in the middle probably to the wrong number anyway. I finally found a chat window at the bottom of the page of Home/Support/AT&T TV. Had to go through the automated virtual assistant first but then I just typed in "representative". It took a while, quite a while, but someone eventually was able to help me. As soon as I reported the scam, the representative let his supervisor know and I received a personal phone call immediately from that supervisor. I told him all the details and he assured me that it will be looked into. I don't know if any of the previous people who have posted on this forum have actually reported what happened to them to AT&T or simply just posted on this forum. I took it to the next step and I copied and pasted the link of this forum and put it in the chat session, so they actually have a record of all the posts now. Maybe this will help stop the scammers somehow.

AT&T is well aware of the scam.  These scammers operate outside of the US which makes it virtually impossible to stop them.

DTV sent these to all receivers in late 2020.

This scam is STILL ongoing. They absolutely have direct access to some account information. My 90 year old grandparents were targeted, and almost had us fooled. They know:
Customers name

Exact monthly bill amount

The can:

Somehow trigger DirecTV to send out a new receiver.

Get DirecTV to switch service over to the new receiver without calling DirecTV as a customer.

I can't believe this has been going on for YEARS and DirecTV has not patched this hole in their security.  We were sent a "new" receiver, which was OLDER than the one we already had. When we tried to contact the "support" people for the upgrade they said the agent was busy. So we called DirecTV directly, and that is where we learned this was all bogus. The DirecTV support person said that we had not called in months, yet somehow the "new" receiver had been activated on our account, and she saw the DirecTV employee number who switched it over.

So somehow this scam is either involving DirecTV employees, or some access to the DirecTV system that allows them to access some fundamental customer info and the ability to activate and deactivate customer receivers.

My guess is they are using some 3rd party installer access to DirecTV (most of the dish installers are 3rd party businesses that display the DirecTV logo, etc) that can do these kinds of things.

The long-game scam works like this:

• They call and said they are with DirecTV, and the satellite system is being upgraded and your receiver is going to stop working when the upgrade takes place.
• They will have you go into your receiver info and double-check your hardware / firmware versions to sound more legit. They had us do this by holding the Info button on the remote for several seconds.
• They know information about the account - names, address, phone. They also know the exact monthly bill amount.
• They tell you the receiver will be $199. However they will credit your bill by $10 a month for two years to offset the cost.
• Then they somehow trigger a receiver to be sent out. It came to us the next day, and it is indeed from DirecTV Memphis warehouse.
• They give you a phone number and name / employee number to call back to activate the new receiver when it comes.  His name was "Jackson" and employee code was like "HAH6".
• My grandfather called back when the receiver came, and got through to "Jackson". However my grandfather has difficulty hearing and he hooked the receiver up wrong, so he couldn't get it to display. However, they still partially switched over to the new receiver (the original receiver was deactivated and the new one partially set up). So they have some actual access to do these things in the DirecTV system.
• I came the next day to help set it up, and called the supposed support line. Jackson was busy and they said he'd call back. This rang a bell with me because there is no way that only one specific person at DirecTV has the ability to set up a new receiver, so I called DirecTV directly.
• I was on the phone with DirecTV support for an hour (like actually with a representative that long). They were clearly in the US and she spoke perfect English, unlike the scammer who was definitely from India.  She went back and forth with her supervisor over this. She had a lot of difficulty trying to deactivate the new receiver and reactivate the original one. I'm not sure why, but something about this was far more difficult than normal.
• She said they had no support information that we had called in the last several weeks. She did have the employee number of who switched that receiver over the day before, and they were going to investigate.
• A day later the scammer called my grandfather back. He cussed my grandfather and said they would never have functioning television again the rest of their lives.
• So far we haven't had any other issues.

The long-game scam is that after activating the new receiver, they then require the $199 payment for the new receiver.

This must be costing DirecTV thousands and thousands of dollars for shipping receivers back and forth that is totally unnecessary.  I can't believe this is still ongoing, and they haven't plugged this security hole in accessing their system. As I said in my previous post, this must be involving their 3rd party installer network, and they aren't vetting them good enough so these scammers can keep gaining access as new installers (or something similar).