New Craigslist Scam

The scam:

You put your own personal telephone number (mobile or land line number) out in public somewhere (on a classified ad, or a dating website, or wherever).

Some scammer contacts you via text or email about your ad.  They tell you a story about how they are going to call you, but they are using a special phone service that requires that you enter a two digit code number on your phone keypad when they call, so you can talk to them.

The scammer is going through the Google Voice setup process.  The tell Google Voice to call your personal number and it displays the code on their screen.  They tell you to enter that code number

When you do that, THEY, not you, are issued a Google Voice number, using your personal number as the forwarding number for their account.

The fix:

You must take your personal number back, away from their Google Voice account.  Detailed instructions are below.  The instructions are written for the old, "Legacy" version of the Google Voice web site.

You do that by (re)adding your personal phone number to either your own existing Google Voice account, or, if you don't have a Google Voice account of your own, then

You need to create your own Google Voice account, and add your own, personal phone number to it as a forwarding phone number.

At no time do you enter a Google Voice number as a forwarding number.

In many cases, the scammer has already removed your forwarding phone number from their account already.  Their goal is not to forward calls to your personal phone number, but merely to use it as an "admission ticket" to get their own Google Voice number, use it to scam others, get rid of that number, and then repeat the scam over and over. 

Happy new year Jaz. 

https://www.ted.com/talks/james_veitch_this_is_what_happens_when_you_rep...