If you do answer, and they start asking questions, just hang up. If your insurance is overdue, you should know it. If you don't, your insurance should be sending you a renewal. In the Post.
Lots of telephone scam threads but this is as good as any.
A quick-witted taxi driver enabled scammers to be caught and arrested as he telephoned Police when he was asked to drive an old lady to the bank where she withdrew several thousand francs:
Telephone fraudsters are currently active again. On Tuesday afternoon, October 1, 2024, and on Thursday morning, October 3, 2024, the Zurich city police arrested several suspected fraudsters. They had put pensioners under pressure with a false story and demanded several thousand francs from them.
On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after 12 noon, a taxi driver reacted correctly and reported to the Zurich City Police Operations Center. He reported that he had just driven an elderly lady to a bank where she had withdrawn a large sum of cash.
Because he assumed it was a grandparent scam, he dialed 117. Investigators from the Zurich city police immediately took over the case. A short time later, they observed a man who met with the woman and left the place with an envelope.
The investigators decided to check the man, a 62-year-old Romanian, and seized suspected stolen goods worth several thousand Swiss francs.
German and Afghan fraudsters were also arrested.
Full story, in German, here
There’s a good BBC radio series on scams.
This one, where people have had their bank accounts cleared out relies on people leaving their cards with their mobile phone - commonly in a bag at the gym.
Basically, using the card information, the thief steals the bag containing phone and card, installs a bank app on a separate phone and to get this authenticated, the bank will send them a code to their existing phone.
The thief can see this code as most people allow notifications to appear on a locked phone screen (I did before listening to this).
They then usually have a two hour window to go shopping for expensive goods they can sell on quickly (they buy another phone first).
Interesting point about phone notifications - I just turned mine off now as well, as in, it won’t display on the lock screen.
I set it to “Don’t show notifications at all”, but I noticed there was a middle option, “hide sensitive content”. I wonder if that would be sufficient? I mean, would it automatically recognise a verification code and hide it?
Also, beware you probably do not want a third pillar with an insurance company, it’s legal but it’s a trap.
Mine will let me chose app by app which notifications I want to turn off.