Have you received these international ‘Missed Calls’? BE WARNED!!

Have you received an international ‘Missed Call’ lately starting with prefixes such as +41 (Switzerland), +963 (Syria), +252 (Somalia), and +37 (Latvia)?

I know many of you might have been a target especially with the last two weeks or so.

A number of Kenyans have been receiving phone calls or found missed calls from strange international numbers especially numbers originating from such countries such as Albania, Syria, Andorra, Azerbaijan and Qatar.

Safaricom customers who had been affected took to twitter to complain while Telkom Kenya said it had received a “number of complaints” about the international calls.

Both companies have now warned customers to be wary of strange international calls and to ignore and block the callers.

“We have advised our customers to ignore these calls and to avoid returning any missed calls from unknown international numbers,” said Telkom Kenya.

Safaricom warned its customers against returning calls by unknown numbers with strange international prefixes. It asked customers to forward the international numbers that have called them to 333, a short-code which the company makes available to customers for reporting fraud.

This is a global telephone scam which sees fraudsters dialing random numbers and immediately disconnecting in the hope that their targets will call back. Once you call, your number is re-routed to a premium rate number overseas and will be subsequently billed exorbitant sums while listening to pre-recorded messages.

The scam, commonly known as ‘Wangiri Fraud’, sees scam artists use phone numbers bought on the dark web (where criminals trade in illegal goods and services) to dial phone users in other countries and then immediately disconnect the calls to them. 

The aim of the scam is to encourage those who see these missed calls on their phone think that they may have missed an important international call and ring the number back, after which they will be ripped off.

So, next time you receive such a call from a strange number, the best and only advice is to ignore.