Your phone rings, but no one is there: You just got scammed!

From the FBI website:

It's called a "denial-of-service" attack and they're nothing new. Computer hackers have used them to take down websites. But in a new twist, criminals are using telephones to keep you looking the other way while they steal your money.

Here's how it works. You get a telephone call and when you answer you hear dead air or a recorded message, advertisements or even a phone sex menu. What the crooks are actually doing is using automated dialing programs and multiple accounts to overwhelm the phone lines. The calls are a diversion tactic. While the lines are tied up, the criminals are masquerading as the victims and are raiding bank accounts, online trading funds or other money management accounts.

The FBI explains how it works:

--Weeks or months before the phone calls start, a criminal uses social engineering tactics or malware to elicit personal information from a victim that this person's bank or financial institution would have-like account numbers and passwords. Perhaps the victim responded to a bogus e-mail phishing for information, inadvertently gave out sensitive information during a phone call, or put too much personal information on social networking sites that are trolled by criminals.

--Using technology, the criminal ties up the victim's various phone lines.

--Then, the criminal either contacts the financial institution pretending to be the victim…or pilfers the victim's online bank accounts using fraudulent transactions. Normally, the institution calls to verify the transactions, but of course they can't get through to the victim over the phone.

--If the transactions aren't made, the criminals sometimes re-contact the financial institution as the victim and ask for it to be done. Or they add their own phone number to victims' accounts and just wait for the bank to call.

By the time the victim or the financial institution realizes what happens, it's too late.

Tips to protect yourself:

--never give out personal information to an unsolicited phone caller or via e-mail

--change online banking and automated telephone system passwords frequently

--check your account balances often; and protect your computers with the latest virus protection and security software.

And if you think you may have been targeted by a telephone denial-of-service attack, contact your financial institution and your telephone provider, and file a complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center.

To read more about the scam, click here.