Watch Out For The 'Can You Hear Me?' Phone Scam Happening Now

“Can you hear me now?” “Is this you?” “Are you there?”

If you’re asked a question like this in a normal conversation, it’s polite to let the other person know that you hear them loud and clear. But if you’re asked this at the beginning of a call from a random phone number, you should be wary.

That’s because these questions are the signs of a fast-growing scam, according to a new alert from the Better Business Bureau, a nonprofit that tracks bad advertisements and customer complaints in North America.

Since mid-March, there has been an uptick in people reporting that they are concerned about this scam, said Melanie McGovern, the BBB’s director of public relations and social media.

Here’s how the scam works. A stranger will start the call asking, “Can you hear me?” to get you to respond “yes.” They may keep you on the line by pretending to be a government official or a bank representative, but often they hang up shortly after you confirm that you are listening. That’s because their goal is to get you to say “yes” so they know there is a person on the other line.

And now that they know you might respond in the future, the scammer may continue to contact you and then try to “trip you up” when you’re not as focused on what they’re saying, McGovern said.

A random “can you hear me?” question should be your first red flag that this unsolicited call could be a scam, said Kelly Richmond Pope, a professor of forensic accounting at DePaul University and the author of “Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets From the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry.”

A conversation with a random number that starts with “can you hear me?” is suspicious “because it’s so outside of the typical conversational cycle,” Pope said.

But before you panic,