Consumers warned against African call scam

Ciara Galvin

PHONE users in Mayo and across the country are being inundated with scam phone calls seemingly from African nations.
The scam which is known as the ‘Wangiri’ call, a Japanese term that means ‘one ring and cut’, has been spreading across Ireland for a number of weeks.
The scam works if unsuspecting people phone back the number and are kept on the line for a period of time at premium rates. Numbers usually start with the prefix +231 or +269, and calls show countries such as Chad, Liberia and Somalia.
Superintendent Joe McKenna has advised people never to answer these numbers but said, at the moment he has not heard of anyone being at a financial loss as a result of the scam.
The Commission for Communications Regulation has advised consumers to be vigilant at all times.
“We would advise consumers that returning calls to unknown international numbers can be costly and we advise consumers to exercise caution when they receive a missed call from such numbers.”
It has issued a number of advisory tips to consumers including to be wary of multiple calls/missed calls being received from the same number that you are unfamiliar with.
The communications body says that if consumers are receiving persistent missed calls from an unknown number, contact your service provider in the first instance. Consumers should not call back any number they don’t recognise where there is a blank or no voicemail message left and if a person does dial back an unknown number by mistake – hang up immediately on calls where there appears to be no recipient on the other end or where you are left on hold.
If people have friends or relatives abroad that may call, the advice is to store their number (including the country prefix) in your phone and be aware of the prefix for the country where they might be calling from.
And finally, but most importantly, CommReg have implored people to never provide any personal information for example – banking details/PPS number/credit card details/name and address/passport numbers.
Responding to questions from The Mayo News, phone network Vodafone issued similar guidelines and warnings to customers and added that the security of their customers was ‘paramount’ and that they are continually striving the enhance security.
The statement concluded by adding: “To protect our customers we implement controls which allow us to stop our customers from calling these numbers back.”