In the modern era of cybersafety, even calling a provider directly might not be enough to save you from scams.
A woman posted a TikTok to raise awareness of a new scam. She says she unwittingly fell victim to it while trying to cancel her Spectrum internet service.
Content creator Brenna Nery (@bren.nery) says she Googled the Spectrum’s customer service number to cancel her service. She was pretty confident that she was speaking to a real representative of the company.
“Nothing within this phone call really struck me as fraud or anything out of the ordinary,” she says. “He knew all of my information: my account number, my email, my phone number.”
When Nery told him that she wanted to cancel her account, “he told [her] how sorry he was, and if there was anything we could do to make it right.”
Was the call suspicious?
“I told him that I already switched. And then he told me I had an outstanding balance of $89.10, which was true,” Nery shares. “I hadn’t made my last payment, so I was like, I’ll go ahead and take care of that now so that I can move forward with canceling my account.”
There was only part of the conversation that seemed suspect, she says. It was the representative telling her that she could not use the bank account on file to charge her final fee. So she had to provide a debit card. Nery provided her card information and was charged $99. She thought that was the end of it, until she went to return her equipment to the Spectrum store.
“I go to return my equipment and she tells me, ‘You have an outstanding balance of $89.10.’ I said that’s not possible, on March 30 when I canceled my account, I made that payment of $99,” Nery tells viewers.
According to Nery, the worker said she indeed could see the account was canceled on March 30. She also saw that a payment bounced back on April 3.
“I showed her the payment that went through on my bank account and she said that was fraud, that’s not coming from Spectrum,” she says.
An awful realization
When she called the fraud hotline provided in-store by the employee, Nery says she was told that a man had called to cancel her account, claiming to be her husband. Based on how much information he had available about her account, she suspects he might have been provided the information from Spectrum or hacked into their system.
“Somehow this David Nelson scammer intercepted my call to Spectrum and she said that he must have been talking to Spectrum at the same time that he was talking to me, and was giving them information while also talking to me to take my debit card,” she says.
Nery says she doesn’t know if Spectrum gave out her information or if he hacked into the internet provider’s system himself.
“Either way, it’s a security breach,” she concludes. “Why would they let an unauthorized user cancel my account and make a payment on my account?”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Nery and Spectrum via email regarding the video.
Can scammers intercept phone calls to service providers?
Believe it or not, scammers have been using this technology for a while.
Reports of scammers intercepting phone calls to legitimate help lines like banks have been circulating since at least 2023.
Scammers have also figured out ways to use call forwarding services to hijack phone services. They can get access to things like activation codes and verification information for a variety of accounts.
@bren.nery The best way to start your morning!! #spectrum #scammerstorytime #scamalert ♬ original sound – brenna nery
Viewers are alarmed at the scam
While viewers did not chime in with experiences mirroring Nery’s, they did share their less-than-stellar stories about using Spectrum’s services.
“YES !! spectrum is a SCAMM. they told us so many times they’d send us labels to ship back bc they don’t allow us to drop off, even tho theSTORE IS RIGHT DOWN THE STREEET,” one commenter wrote.
“Yes careful with spectrum i switched because was [tiered] pricing was [getting] super expensive and internet was slow,” another wrote.
“Spectrum is the absolute worst. we switched to allo 3/4 years ago and truly it’s better,” one said. “Paying less, better internet.”
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