New trick to cheat phone bill

Phone bill scams are becoming more and more sophisticated, causing even the most vigilant people to fall into the trap.

Lost money because of missed calls

Phone fraud is becoming more and more sophisticated - Photo: Ha Huy

After lunch break, Mr. Hung, an employee of a hotel in District 1 (HCMC), suddenly saw a missed call on his phone with the number 0965... He called back and heard a message saying "Someone sent you a gift, a song...", knowing he was scammed, he immediately hung up. Mr. Hung said that even so, his account was still deducted more than 10,000 VND, much higher than normal calls. A similar situation also happened to Ms. Xuan, living in Binh Thanh District (HCMC). Seeing that there were 10 missed calls from a landline number starting with 04..., thinking someone had something urgent, she called back but only heard the operator ringtone instructing her to dial the extension numbers. Even though she hung up immediately, Ms. Xuan was still deducted more than 7,000 VND.

Previously, scammers often used strange foreign numbers with codes such as: +881xxxxxx, +882xxxxxx to create missed calls, tricking phone users into calling back and being charged a huge fee, up to 150,000 VND/minute. After a while, users became wary of these numbers, so the trick of calling changed to using a phone number that looked exactly like a normal subscriber, commonly from landline numbers with numbers like 0351..., 0871... which are quite similar to normal phone numbers, causing many people to be fooled.

According to telecommunications experts, scammers have taken advantage of the method of integrating the 19xx switchboard number into the subscriber number of the junk SIM type through an IVR Gateway software to trick users into calling. Many customers who have been scammed in this way said that in many cases, when calling back, the switchboard on the other side is set up as a kind of automatic answering system of a company or building switchboard, causing mobile users to keep the phone and dial the extension numbers because they mistakenly think that their friends missed a call from a landline number and forget that they are calling back to a mobile number. Each "wrong" call of this type costs from 1,000 VND to 1,200 VND/minute.

“Secretly love you” and cheap website

Every few days, Mr. TQ, living in District 7 (HCMC), receives a text message with the following content: "A friend named T. has liked you for a long time but did not dare to say it. Today, T. asked the switchboard 19002257 to give you a song..." Knowing that this is a spam message, and calling it will cost a lot of money, Mr. TQ is careful not to be fooled. However, regularly receiving these types of messages makes him very uncomfortable.

More sophisticated is the cheap buying and selling website scam. Mr. Hoang, living in Ho Chi Minh City, said: “While looking to buy some products online, I discovered the website az… selling all kinds of products from electronics, cars, imported bicycles to airline tickets. Especially the listed prices are very cheap. I was curious and called the phone number on the website, but in fact, this is a scam hotline with the purpose of picking the phone bills of customers, not a business company. All the phone numbers that this website announced are automatic hotline numbers, there are no sales staff. Just one minute of calling, but I was deducted tens of thousands of dong.”

According to some telecommunications experts, the management of prefix numbers and IVR switchboards is the responsibility of network operators and content providers. To limit the recent scams, it is necessary for network operators to strictly control the prefix rental policy; and regularly review and inspect content service providers.

According to Thanh Nien