Don’t Return Robotic Calls If You Don’t Like Losing Money
I get at least six calls a day from area codes in cities I’ve never been to — say San Angelo, Texas, or Warrenville, Illinois. Sometimes I get a call from my hometown in California, and I’m worried it’s some kind of emergency.
If you get a call from a familiar area code, you might be tempted to return it, but the FCC is now warning consumers not to call unknown numbers back. If you do, you run the risk of paying huge fees for premium rates.
According to a recent FCC statement , this ‘Wangiri’ robotic calling scheme (meaning ‘one call’ in Japanese) targets numbers in short bursts, often in the middle of the night, using the country code ‘222’ (located in Mauritania in According to Alex Kilichi, of the founder of YouMail , a voicemail application for blocking calls with robots, scammers can disguise their area code by “spoofing” or altering caller ID information to display the local code.
The robocaller can hang up after one or two calls, or leave a voice message asking you to call back to “pick up a prize” or get news about a “sick” family member. If you contact them, they will make money depending on how long you talk on the phone.
The FCC reports that single ring scams have recently targeted people in both Arizona and New York, although this is a fairly common scam that you should be aware of. If you receive these calls, the FCC has several safety guidelines on its statement :
- Don’t call back numbers you don’t know, especially numbers that appear to come from abroad.
- File a complaint with the FCC if you receive these calls: www.fcc.gov/complaints
- If you never call overseas, consider talking to your phone company about blocking outgoing international calls to prevent accidental long distance calls.
- Check your phone bill for unfamiliar payments.
If you’re on Android, you can use an app like YouMail to block international calls (although it won’t protect you from tampering).
If you’re using an iPhone, this can be a little tricky, as Apple won’t allow third-party apps to block incoming calls in the same way, Quilici said. He recommends that you put your phone in Do Not Disturb mode. “It allows you to suppress the phone ringing for all those stupid international numbers.”
As we wrote earlier , you don’t want to avoid every call that comes your way, so it can be helpful to schedule Do Not Disturb to end at a specific time or receive calls from specific contacts. And search the Internet for any unknown number. Chances are, you are not the only one receiving these calls, and it helps you know which calls you should take or leave.