

Sections
Highlight
J. Castillo
Wednesday, 22 January 2025, 13:58
Attempted telephone scams are on the increase, authorities in Spain have warned. Despite the latest legislation on the issue, millions of people in Spain continue to receive unwanted communications at all hours of the day and night and they're usually disguised under mobile phone numbers that constantly change.
You have probably received one of these calls in the past few weeks where a voice-over informs you about a job opportunity at Amazon or TikTok, urging you to provide your details in order to apply for the selection process. You don't have to be a genius to spot that it's a scam.
A different matter are those calls that we pick up only to discover that the caller is giving us the silent treatment, taking advantage of our "yes?", to sign us up for subscription services without our real consent. The most prevalent scam, according to authorities, is the one referred to as 'Wangiri'.
Wangiri comes from the Japanese word 'wankiri', which could be translated as 'call and cut'. It dates back to 2010 and is also based on an automated system of phone calls to random numbers. The difference is that the call is hung up on the second or third ring, so that it is recorded as a missed call on the potential victim's phone.
Since there is always someone waiting for a call from a family member, their health centre or a courier company, the likelihood of the receiver returning the call is relatively high. Especially in the case of elderly people, who often call these mysterious numbers out of sheer curiosity or as a method of alleviating their loneliness. The result? A series of hefty charges on their operator's bill, as we are talking about premium rate numbers from overseas.
Movistar advises to take note of the prefixes of the countries from which the highest number of fraudulent calls are registered. Namely: Albania (+355), Bosnia (+387), Ivory Coast (+225), Estonia (+372), Ghana (+233), India (+91), Mali (+223), Morocco (+212), Nigeria (+234), Papua New Guinea (+675), Tunisia (+216), Western Samoa (+685), Sierra Leone (+231), Sri Lanka (+94), Uganda (+256) and Central African Republic (+236).
If we do not have any family members residing in these regions or any interest in them, the advice is to ignore the call. If you return the call you are likely to be met with a voice-over designed to keep you on the phone for more than 15 minutes, while the cost continues to rack up.
Spain's National Police force has also recently insisted on not returning calls from unknown numbers (especially if they have the international prefixes listed). If it is urgent, or if you are being contacted by someone you know, you are likely to try your luck again for the rest of the day. Automated systems rarely try the same number repeatedly: they have millions in their databases to keep them going.
In addition to the above, the force add the following recommendations:
- Enter the number in a search engine to identify it as potentially dangerous: there are numerous websites dedicated to collecting alerts from other users, as well as applications that directly inform us about the nature of the numbers calling.
- Block and report: Once you are sure that the number is fraudulent, the best thing to do is to block it in the 'phone' application on your mobile (depending on the model, this is usually as simple as tapping and holding on the sender and selecting the option). Although more cumbersome, it is also advisable to report the attempted scam to authorities, so the perpetrators can be investigated and, ultimately, cannot re-offend.
In the event that we return the call and hear any recording, we must also be careful not to provide any personal data (full name, address, email accounts, online banking passwords, etc.). Otherwise, in addition to the extra cost in the bill, we could end up facing transactions without our consent, data theft and even extortion attempts.
If the caller is pretending to be a company from which we have purchased or contracted a product or service, when faced with ultimatums or alarming messages, the best thing to do is hang up and contact the official customer service telephone number on the company's website. This will confirm our suspicions of an attempted scam.
Cybersecurity experts also warn of recordings asking people to add a certain number to instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp: be wary is once again the norm.
A feature of the traditional 'Wangiri' scam consists of a voice message notifying us of a message waiting to be listened to on our voicemail: "To listen to it, send an SMS with the word 'VOICEMail' to the number XXX". If we do so, we will receive a second message indicating that an error has occurred. The reality? We have just unknowingly subscribed to a premium phone service. Of course, the best way not to get caught is to remember your operator's voicemail number and not try to access it in any other way.
Publicidad
Publicidad
Publicidad
Publicidad
Esta funcionalidad es exclusiva para registrados.
Reporta un error en esta noticia
Comentar es una ventaja exclusiva para registrados
¿Ya eres registrado?
Inicia sesiónNecesitas ser suscriptor para poder votar.