TWToday: Additional
Hey, I said I'd do one blog post a day. I never said I wouldn't do more.
Our regular readers (by which I mean myself, Skippy and the small creatures that have built their civilisation in the dirt on my glasses) will remember this post (link) from April about some phone scam Skippy had come across and decided to warn people about. It seems we've shown up on Google searches to do with it (we're the second hit if you just search for the number, right above the "Yorkshire Fishing" forums) and we've also been linked in a forum or two. We've recently had a couple of comments on the post, so we've decided to do a brief follow up on it.
Skippy wasn't all that clear on the details at the time, so I'll go over them again here, adding in what we're gleaned from our own Googling (I don't think I'm diluting their trademark if I capitalise it).
From what I can understand, this number (08450229977) calls your mobile phone, probably using some kind of random dialling program (all those thinking of Stargate SG-1 get a gold star). It rings for a couple of seconds at most and if you manage to pick it up, it's a recorded message trying to get you to subscribe to a some kind of texting "service". It's not entirely clear what it is, but if anyone were foolish enough to subscribe, chances are you'll be charged some pretty exorbitant fees and that your phone number, now confirmed as existing, would be stuck on various lists that you probably don't want your phone number on.
So, and bare in mind we're hardly experts, our advice is simply not to answer any calls from this number and to not call it back if you miss said calls. While it seems that the point is to get you on to this SMS service, calling back will confirm the existence of your phone and may well cost you a fair amount of money as well.
As with most scams like this, it'll probably die down in a few weeks at the most as people get wise to it.
Our regular readers (by which I mean myself, Skippy and the small creatures that have built their civilisation in the dirt on my glasses) will remember this post (link) from April about some phone scam Skippy had come across and decided to warn people about. It seems we've shown up on Google searches to do with it (we're the second hit if you just search for the number, right above the "Yorkshire Fishing" forums) and we've also been linked in a forum or two. We've recently had a couple of comments on the post, so we've decided to do a brief follow up on it.
Skippy wasn't all that clear on the details at the time, so I'll go over them again here, adding in what we're gleaned from our own Googling (I don't think I'm diluting their trademark if I capitalise it).
From what I can understand, this number (08450229977) calls your mobile phone, probably using some kind of random dialling program (all those thinking of Stargate SG-1 get a gold star). It rings for a couple of seconds at most and if you manage to pick it up, it's a recorded message trying to get you to subscribe to a some kind of texting "service". It's not entirely clear what it is, but if anyone were foolish enough to subscribe, chances are you'll be charged some pretty exorbitant fees and that your phone number, now confirmed as existing, would be stuck on various lists that you probably don't want your phone number on.
So, and bare in mind we're hardly experts, our advice is simply not to answer any calls from this number and to not call it back if you miss said calls. While it seems that the point is to get you on to this SMS service, calling back will confirm the existence of your phone and may well cost you a fair amount of money as well.
As with most scams like this, it'll probably die down in a few weeks at the most as people get wise to it.
Labels: al additional, Scams
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
10:50 PM
