Police issue warning about ‘can you hear me’ phone scam

IF YOU have received one of these phone calls, you have “serious and legitimate reasons to be concerned”, according to police.

If you receive a ‘can you hear me?’ call, hang up, and don’t respond.

If you receive a phone call and somebody asks, “can you hear me”, don’t say anything and hang up the phone.

Police have sent out a warning about an elaborate phone scam involving this phrasing, which has arrived in Australia after doing the round in the United States and the UK.

The ‘can you hear me?’ phone scam is brief and seems harmless on the surface, but has the potential to end in fraud.

It involves a scammer calling a business or home number and once the person answers the scammer asks ‘can you hear me?’.

The caller may ask it several times, to which most people on the other end would reply with ‘yes’.

The scammer then records the ‘yes’ response and ends the call.

That recording of the victim’s voice can then be used to authorise payments or charges in the victim’s name with voice recognition.

Because it is the person’s voice authorising transactions, it makes it hard to dispute later if a victim claims they have been scammed.

Sunshine Coast Police warned anyone who received calls of this nature had “serious and legitimate reasons to be concerned”, the Sunshine Coast Daily reports.

“We’re now sharing this post statewide as we believe it to be hitting many areas,” police warn.

To avoid being scammed, police have encouraged people to share the warning.

If you receive a ‘can you hear me?’ call, hang up, and don’t respond.

If you do respond with a ‘yes’ contact your bank and monitor your accounts closely.

— With Kidspot