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Beware of spoofing phone scams

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Sometimes, scammers spoof a phone number to pretend to be Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield or one of our family of companies. They do this to try and take your hard-earned money. You can avoid their tricks by learning to tell suspicious calls from legitimate ones. For starters, licensed Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies do not refer to themselves as “Blue Cross,” “Blue Shield,” or “Blue Cross Blue Shield.” We use our corporate or trade names, like Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Unfortunately, scammers use “spoofing” technology. This technology can show any telephone number on your phone instead of the actual number calling. This makes it difficult to know who the caller really is. And sometimes, it says the call is from us. “Keeping our members safe from phone scams is very important to us,” said Curtis Barnett, president and chief executive officer of Arkansas Blue Cross. “We have specific guidelines for outbound calls, and we hope that by sharing this information, we can help our members protect themselves.”

How can you tell if a call is from us?

We will never:
  • Ask for a bank account number*
  • Ask for an entire Social Security number
  • Ask health information without first verifying your identity
  • Call after 9 p.m. (Central time)
We will always:
  • Introduce ourselves and the company we represent
  • Identify your group health plan by name (Example: “This is Mary Jones from Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, calling about your plan with ABC Company … ”)
  • Mention that the call is being recorded for training and quality purposes
If you still think a call might be a phone scammer pretending to be Arkansas Blue Cross, you can take the following steps:
  • Ask for a confirmation number and hang up
  • Call the number listed on the back of your health insurance ID card
  • Finally, provide the confirmation number to the customer service representative who answers and have them direct the call to the person who called initially

Medicare scams

Our Medicare members can be targeted by a different type of phone scam. Learn more about Medicare scams. *On rare occasions, Arkansas Blue Cross customer service representatives may call customers who have issues with their payments. These representatives will always verify their identities by telling the customer the amount they previously paid.
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