I simply hung up and called Telstra to check if it was true. Of course, it wasn’t, but they did ask for permission to trace my phone calls to try and catch the offender. 

Today I received a second call from them so I played along to give time for the trace to work. He knew my first initial and surname and had my address but didn’t have my date of birth. 

I asked him if we were going to fix it the same way as last time and if he needed to do remote access to my computer. He said yes and sounded very happy until I later told him I had already traced the call to the Philippines (as he had a Filipino accent) and we were just waiting for the final address to come through so we could come & arrest him. He hung up pretty quickly. 

Another thing I’ve noticed about these scams is they all come from a private number and the date of the call is January 1, and the time is always 12am regardless of what the true time and date are. 

The scam about being from the Department of Taxation also comes from a number with that time and date. 

If you get these calls ring your telco for help. So, people, be warned: if you get a call from Telstra or whoever, make sure they are who they say they are and never give remote access to your computer to anyone unless you are 100 per cent sure you know them and can trust them. 

– Paul Smith, Cooranbong