Possible fraud case might be that they want you to call them back and then there’s a premium service behind that number.
Emir wrote:
Possible fraud case might be that they want you to call them back and then there’s a premium service behind that number.
That was not possible with the +44 22 * numbers since they were invalid.
A call that arrived today was from Toronto in Canada. They start getting really creative.
Possible fraud case might be that they want you to call them back and then there’s a premium service behind that number.
Indeed, but BT (British Telecom) doesn’t allow a “normal rate” looking number to front a premium rate operation. BT has always had really strict rules on conning callers, going back many decades to the days when it was at times technically hard to achieve. For example if you live in Brighton (01273 area code) the following will all work and will cost the same
234567*
01273 234567
0044 1273 234567
+44 1273 234567
* is a funny one; it actually doesn’t work anymore because BT sold off too many Brighton numbers to VOIP companies who were willing to pay for “geographic” numbers so they can look “proper British” while calling from Bongo-Bongo Land 
So the area code is now mandatory in Brighton, because it increases the available number range (numbers can start with 0,1 etc). But not everywhere.
So e.g. the above number, 020 3021 4490, is a straight London area number which nobody is going to make any money out of. This list shows that the really juicy ones start with 09…
There have been loads of people making random VOIP calls, presenting the 09… an similar numbers on CLI and getting people to call them (and other variations such as sending SMSs asking people to call a number to claim a prize), but they have to run off with the money fairly fast because BT eventually gets complaints and busts them.
Perhaps an Austrian person could do the equivalent lookup for +43 720 882904. It may be a premium rate number, or maybe Austria permits concealment of premium rates on normal looking numbers.
Frequently I get “The caller has withheld his number”.
I got a BT email today about activating a free service for refusing calls from listed numbers. A useless idea, which BT should know is useless.
PS I’ve never raised nuicance calls with BT, my services provider.
That sort of thing is perhaps intended to block calls from known people who harrass you (the ex, etc). I wonder how they implement it, because if you withold your caller ID it is still delivered all the way to the destination exchange
A lot of people I have known block calls from CLI-witheld numbers, which just makes their life harder for a negligible gain.
I suspect what Dimme is seeing is another fashion which will go away in due course.
So I have been in contact with my operator. According to them these people are calling around 100 numbers at once, and the first one that answers gets connected to some call center that tries to sell you something. The remaining 99 calls get dropped. The operator claims there is nothing they can do about that and they hope it will die out in due time.
Now at least it makes sense why they hang up, they brute force themselves to someone that answers.
Thanks Dimme, that’s a good explanation.
Assuming this calling strategy uses completely random target numbers or sequences, it will be more effective in US than UK. It’s observable in US that an innocently mis-dialled number will very often connect to an equally innocent subscriber. In UK, the vast bureaucratic number profligacy means that a mis-dialled number is less likely to be in service. This is the one benefit we have of allowing our public service to foist us with 11-digit numbers (more complexity than the 10 digit US!) as punishment for insisting on ‘privitisation’! Kind of 8.33 of the telephone.
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Numbering complexity has little to do with privatisation. The US system has always been private (although at certain stages, it’s been an AT&T private monopoly). The US has just had a better numbering plan, that’s all – which was put into place probably before it all got out of hand because the US telephone system was entirely electronic a couple of decades before the UK’s and thus didn’t need all the workarounds for all the old equipment (my local phone exchange was still a mechanical Strowger in the early 1990s, and mechanical Strowger exchanges were still in service in the UK until the mid-90s).
Also, AFAIK, the USA has the same numbering system for mobile numbers as for land numbers. I am not sure you can tell the difference. In the UK you certainly can tell, but the value in that (avoiding the more expensive calls) is probably gone since so many people, especially younger people, live purely on a mobile number.
You can’t tell the difference.
The big difference (which either enabled this or forced it to happen) is in the US, you pay for both outgoing and incoming calls on a mobile (and also for incoming text messages, which meant a malicious party could spam your phone and stick you with a huge bill). In the UK (except when roaming is involved), the caller always pays and the callee never pays. In the US, calling a mobile number in your area code was a free local call, with the person you called – in the early days – paying the 50 cents a minute charges (considerably cheaper or even unmetered these days).
