Your AT&T Account Has Been Suspended
[UPDATED: July 3, 2021] This scam is still active! There is a phone scam making the rounds that begins with a recorded message. It says “If you are an AT&T Wireless customer, your account has been suspended for verification. For account, press 1. To be transferred over to a representative, press 2.”
The criminals behind this scam are spoofing the real AT&T service number because the caller ID came up as 800-331-0500. A web search for this number shows many people reporting this scam call. Others are reporting the same scam call coming from 800-441-0500. (visit: WhyCall.me) Many people are saying this is a phishing scam for personal information. For example, one woman reported that pressing “2” to speak to a representative brought her to a prompt asking for the last 4 digits of her social security number.
Another variation of this scam was reported in January in which callers are asked for their PIN they received via a text message. Read the posts about this variation here on the AT&T Forums.
UPDATE: 12/23/20:
On December 23, 2020 one of our readers informed us that she received a call in the morning from an auto caller robot saying that her AT&T account was suspended. She goes on to say… “[It] gave me an option to press one for account something or another, or to speak to representative, push two, which I did. The person then said my account was suspended because someone had tried to purchase two iPhone 8s that morning in Indiana using my account. I said no, not at all, that was definitely not me, but how would they be able to do that through my account? I needed to know what to change. Then I started getting suspicious and asked him how I knew this was a legitimate call in the first place. He explained that AT&T only uses robocalls for safety, and by my requesting to speak to an agent, that was the same as if I had called them and initiated contact. He said it appeared I had been hacked, and he was looking into it. After putting me on hold for a second, he said he was sending me a number to reset my passcode so I could change my password. The message said “your temporary password is X. The person told me they needed to verify I was indeed the account owner, and not the fraudulent person, so that is why he was sending me this number to reset my passcode to my phone directly. So he managed to hit on all the things that a prudent person would believe. The message also said If you did not request this, call 1-800 ATT-2020. We’ll never contact you to ask for this password. So I asked him about that, and he said since I pressed the 2 key asking to talk to a representative, I HAD contacted them, but if I was more comfortable going to an AT&T store to do this in person, I could do that. I said I thought I probably would prefer to do that, and before I could say anything else, he hung up on me. That right there IMMEDIATELY confirmed to me that it seems to be a scam. But it sure was a good one.
I’m always so careful, but I was distracted today, and had received a legitimate email two days ago from AT&T informing me I was getting ready to exceed my monthly data allotment. I ignored the email and figured I would hear back if I needed to do anything. Today was a really bad coincidence. They almost got lucky! Thanks for your website!”
The woman told us this call came from 435-402-5555. She said that she never answers numbers she doesn’t know, but this morning her son had forgotten his phone and she thought he was borrowing someone else’s to call home. This is a perfect example how people can unintentionally answer scam calls, and begin their journey down a rabbit hole.
Apparently this same scam has targeted Verizon Wireless customers as well and was reported by many people here on their community board.
(If you have a better quality recording of this scam or a variation of it, send it to spoofs@thedailyscam.com!)
SCAM PHONE NUMBERS REPORTED TO TDS REPRESENTING AT&T, saying account was suspended:
253-219-8680 (7/3/21)
281-660-6350 (5/20/21)
860-764-2337 (1/13/21)
480-962-2038 and 520-653-9515 (12/29/20)
435-402-5555 (12/23/20)
714-825-4164 (12/14/20)
214-771-2335 (10/16/20)
