You go about your business calmly and suddenly they call your phone. You want to take the call and you take your iPhone out of your pocket, but it’s an unknown number. Doubts. And before you decide, the call hangs up. What are you doing? Curiosity may lead you to return that call, and This is when you are already a victim of deception.
This is what happens with the so-called missed call scam, where you can unknowingly pay money to those who commit it by simply answering a call from a number you don’t know. not. Let us remember the mechanism of deception and what to do to avoid falling in.
Ignoring calls from strange numbers is the best thing you can do
A few days ago, the famous IT security company Bitdefender analyzed the spam we receive during our calls and detected that almost half of the Halloween-themed spam we receive is fraudulent, it is scam attempts from countries like Malaysia or the United States. Spam continues to grow, even though we block lines of unknown origin.
You may remember this hoax when it first appeared over a year ago. The Civil Guard itself warnedindicating that the calls are coming from strange phone numbers with unknown prefixes. These are the extensions of numbers from Ghana (233), Ivory Coast (225) or Albania (355) among other countries. But there are others, such as calls from Germany itself, which use the prefix +49 (0049). And of course, being European, it’s easier to snack on.
The technique consists of the following formula:
- A number with one of the prefixes mentioned above calls you for a few seconds, so you don’t have time to pick up.
- Sometimes they call you, you pick up on time and they disconnect: they hang up.
- With this technique they want to make you curious and reminded. If you call to ask, the call usually puts you on hold and you hear ambient noise.
Well, as soon as you make that call, you’re charged money that, in part, goes directly to those who made the call. There’s not even a need for human communication, just ringtones andYou are billed at the special rate that this number may have. And here is the cash injection.
What should you do about it? If you notice that your iPhone is receiving a call with a strange phone number and with a prefix that you don’t recognize, don’t pick up. Ignore the call and, for added security, block the phone number. There is no other option. Well yes, report so that they include this number on the Robinson list.
An older version of this article was originally published on 06/10/2023.
Picture | Anna Shvets
In Applesfera | This hacker demonstrates at a cybersecurity conference why we need to turn off Bluetooth on our iPhone
In Applesfera | The 32 best iPhone games: free, paid and included in Apple Arcade
