I just had a call from this number. Young foreign voice immediately had me on my guard. Called me by my full name and then
you have a beautiful property there. I have some interested travellers for your property from Asia.
I googled the number and via www.badnumbers.co.uk I see it is a skype number. Several different scams mentioned but one person said
This is a number skype use for skype to landline/mobile calling. I just called my son on his mobile via SKYPE and that came up on his caller id. The scammers are switching to Skype as it is cheaper and less easy to police.
Worth being cautious but also worth realising that many non-scammers are now using Skype to land-lines, especially from overseas. I have a brother living abroad and he always calls me this way - it's much better value.
Yes I know, which is what the quote I included explains. But if you're not expecting a Skype call, or don't have anyone who calls you using Skype then it's worth being on your guard. It looks like a normal number; isn't a number withheld for example, so it's easy to answer believing it may be a genuine guest.
We use skype a lot - and have a skype number - it looks just like a normal Brighton telephone number from the code but in fact connects to our skype account so if anyone calls it it comes through on Skype to our PC - or one of our mobliles if we are not on line at the time. Very useful as people can dial it from the UK at UK rates so we use the number in our property ads - the only thing is that some "agencies" looking for work also use it which is annoying as when it goes to the mobile we end up payng for the call but that could happen with any mobile number I suppose. With Sykpe however we do get a load of contact requests from very dubious sources "LovelyLizzy" and "SexyMary" to quote just two but these are easily recognised and blocked.
I don't profess to own anything here apart from my own opinion.
The problem is you can have a SKype number very cheaply and you then get offered a whole range of numbers to choose from . Mostly they look like normal UK landline numbers. We chose ours because it matched our UK address location but we could have chosen from loads of others. Of course once you have such a number, if you then use it it appears to others as if you are phoning from a UK phone - when in fact the the person could be almost anywhere in the country or world!!!! Very useful for us - but possibly an easy setup for scammers to use.....
I don't profess to own anything here apart from my own opinion.
I put a skype contact on our website and it seems that I am inordinately attractive to colonels in the American armed forces, all of whom seem to have an incredible amount of medals pinned to their chests.
As a guest has never contacted me via the skype button I think I'll just remove it. A sad loss to the American armed forces no doubt
