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Phone scam: never call back numbers with these prefixes
Guardia Civil in Spain warn of the latest con designed to scam you out of a fortune
As our technology becomes more sophisticated, so do the scams designed to trick us out of our hard-earned cash. From the foreign prince just after inheriting a fortune to the more recent but prolific ‘highway cowboys’ con in Spain, we’ve all heard of, if not been victim to, these shady operations.
As the vacation season is upon us, the Guardia Civil has taken to Twitter to warn of the latest missed phone call scam. Most people are by now familiar with ‘phishing’, in which fraudsters pose as a well-known company, usually via email or SMS, in order to convince their unsuspecting victims to “provide their personal or bank data, make an economic contribution and even install a malicious program on their device.”
You might also like: Murcia-bound couple narrowly escapes notorious car theft scam
This new trick is much more simple: the target receives a missed call from a foreign number and if curiosity prompts them to call back, they are charged a fortune for their trouble.
The advice from the authorities is simple: if you don’t recognise a number, never, ever call back.
So clever is the con that the scammers have it set up in such a way that the original call barely rings once, ensuring that their victim never has a chance to pick up and always ends up with a missed call that they may be inclined to return.
In this case, curiosity most definitely killed the cat.
According to the Guardia Civil, missed calls from the following prefixes should be avoided at all costs:
- 355: Albania
- 225: Ivory Coast
- 233: Ghana
- 234: Nigeria
¿Conoces el timo de la llamada perdida? 📞
— Guardia Civil 🇪🇸 (@guardiacivil) June 6, 2022
No devuelvas perdidas de estos prefijos:
355 👉 Albania
225 👉 Costa de Marfil
233 👉 Ghana
234 👉 Nigeria
Te cobrarán una tarificación especial. pic.twitter.com/tVIinOZ4ZC
Image: Archive
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