Why am I being called by foreign numbers?

Why am I being called by foreign numbers?

If you were asking why you’re being called by foreign numbers from countries where you don’t know anyone, the answer is simple: fraud attempts. For some years, there are many attempts of fraud which consists of foreign numbers from Russia, South Africa, Mali, Senegal, Pakistan, Iraq and many others.

The calls are either a short beep or a long ring and in case it is answered, nobody speaks on the other end. This happens so the target is tempted to call back, and when this happens, your phone bill will be increased. When we see a missed call, we are tempted to call back and usually the call costs more than it should.

Why am I being called by foreign numbers? Furthermore, some attempts are more intelligent than other and when we call back we can hear a voice robot in our language whos purpose is to keep us engaged in the call as long as possible, so we are charged more.

In other cases, when we call back there is a robot which immediately answers but it plays a sound identical with the ringing sound, therefore we are already engaged in a call but we think it is still ringing. The only way we can see the call was answered is by looking at our phone screen and see the counter increasing.

These fraud attempts can occur regardless of the network we are subscribed to with the sole purpose of us being charged extra compared to a normal call.

Why am I being called by foreign numbers?  – How to avoid the phone fraud attempts?

There is one easy way we can avoid these fraud attempts: don’t call back any number from another country if we are not expeting a call from that country. For example, if we are from Germany and we don’t know anyone abroad, there is a pretty small chance someone we know calls us from South Africa, right?

Most of the smartphones automatically identify the country when someone is calling us so we can see which country does that call come from, so we will not be surprised when being called from another country.

In addition, if we receive calls from foreign countries, we can block that number (we can add it to a blacklist), most phones support this option but in most cases this does not help as the calls rarely come from the same number.

Why am I being called by foreign numbers?
In case we were charged extra because we called a fraud number, can we recover our money?

The chance to recover our money in this case is next to zero as calls usually come from countries outside of the EU. For example, if we are from Ireland, calls are being made from South Africa or Russia, not from a EU country, because it is much harder to trace the owner. Also, that person did not force us to call that number, therefore it’s hard to prove this is a fraud. It’s much easier to just pay the phone bill than trying to recover our money.

Why am I being called by foreign numbers?
How much am I charged if I call a fraud number?

The call fare is not standard and it is variable, therefore it depends on the number and the fare our mobile network operator charges us to that country. The fare can be 10 cents a minute but it could also be a few dollars a minute.

Why am I being called by foreign numbers?
Am I being charged if I answer a call from another country?

The answer is no, we are not charged if we answer a call, the important thing is we don’t call back. You will see that if you manage to answer a call from one of the countries I wrote above (in the rare cases you can answer and it is not only a missed call), the caller hangs up immediately, so he would tempt you to call back.

In conclusion, our advice is that you avoid calling back numbers from foreign countries if you don’t have any relatives/friends in that country. Most probably it’s a mistake or a fraud attempt.

If you were called from a number which consisted a fraud attempt, please leave a comment with that number, maybe we can help other people to avoid calling it back.

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