New phone scam hits people with £300 bills

Updated
Woman Working In Home Office On Phone
Woman Working In Home Office On Phone



Mobile phone users are being hit with bills of hundreds of pounds, thanks to a mystifying new scam.

According to Money Mail, victims are being charged for calls lasting several hours that they say they haven't made.

The scam begins with a call to the user's phone that lasts less than a second, and that the user generally doesn't even notice. Much later, though, when their phone bill arrives, it shows a call to the same 0845 or 0843 number.

And some of these calls apparently last for up to 12 hours, incurring charges of up to £300.

The numbers involved lead to voicemail systems of claims management firms offering to help win compensation for flight delays or motor accidents.

And at least one of these numbers has already been reported on the BBC's You and Yours programme as a dodgy PPI caller.

The scammers are clearly renting the 0845 and 0843 numbers and setting high fees for incoming calls. However, it's not at all clear how the long calls are being made.

One possibility is that the fraudsters are hacking into victims' phones and programming them to automatically call back if there is a missed call from those particular numbers.

Many of the people affected are Vodafone customers, but the company says it hasn't been hacked.

"Our security monitoring systems have identified that a number of customers have returned unsolicited calls, leading to them being charged significant amounts," it says.

"We have taken proactive measures to ensure none of the customers affected are out of pocket and have identified and blocked the numbers creating this issue."

And, regulator Ofcom says customers of several other networks have also been hit, and that it is launching an investigation.

In the meantime, there doesn't appear to be much that people can do to protect themselves from the scam. While it's possible to block calls from individual numbers, there's nothing to stop the scammers renting new ones.

The good news is that the phone networks are aware of the scam, meaning that affected customers should be believed - and refunded.

New Warning About Phone Scam Claiming to Be from IRS
New Warning About Phone Scam Claiming to Be from IRS








Advertisement