Can You Hear Me? is an alleged telephone scam that occurred in the United States and Canada in 2017. Questions have been raised as to whether such a scam actually occurred, or if it occurred in the form generally described.
Video Can You Hear Me? (telephone scam)
Background
According to news reports on the alleged scam, victims of the purported fraud receive telephone calls from an unknown person who asks "can you hear me"? The victim's response of "yes" is recorded and subsequently used to make unauthorized purchases in the victim's name. Between January and February 2017, the existence of the scam was reported by multiple media outlets including CBS News and NPR affiliate WNYC-FM. In January 2017, Seattle NBC affiliate KING-TV contacted police agencies in western Washington and reported no authorities had heard of the scam; in a follow-up story the next month the station reported that many police in the area had since received concerned inquiries about "the scam that was sweeping the country".
In early February 2017 the Delta, British Columbia newspaper The Delta Optimist reported that "the 'Can you hear me?' scam has now crossed the border into Canada".
By the end of February 2017, reports of this scam came to light in the United Kingdom with CPR Call Blocker, a call blocking company warning of it in The Independent.
On March 27, 2017, the FCC issued an official warning about the telephone scam.
Maps Can You Hear Me? (telephone scam)
Veracity
Investigating reports of the alleged scam, Snopes noted that all purported targets of the scam only reported having been victimized after hearing about the scam in news reports. Snopes went on to note that it had contacted the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Consumer Federation of America, none of whom could provide evidence of an individual actually having been financially defrauded after receiving one of the telephone calls. Snopes also analyzed a number of news reports in which media interviewed self-identified victims of the scam; in none of the stories it looked at did a victim report having been financially defrauded after receiving one of the phone calls. Snopes ultimately classified the claims as "unproven".
Tom Lyons, a columnist at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, theorized that the purported calls were an automated dialer employed by a telemarketing firm to confirm the authenticity of the telephone numbers on its dialing lists, and not an attempt at financial fraud. This theory was echoed by an official at the caller ID company Hiya.
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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