'One ring' Phone Scam Sweeps the Country!

Just want to give you all a "heads up" about this scam that's going across the country.
The BBB says this scam is more effective than others because it doesn't raise any red flags.

Take a look at your phone before you answer it to see where the call is coming from! The calls usually come from numbers with area codes 268, 809, 876, 284 and 473, and come from Antigua.

www.wbir.com...

A new phone scam is sweeping the country, including East Tennessee.

Scammers overseas buy or steal lists of US cell phone numbers and use computers to mass dial. Your phone will ring just once-- long enough to generate a missed call. When you call back, the scammers charge you $20 for the call and another $9 for every minute you spend on the line.

NBC News says if you're really tempted to call back, you should plug the number into Google first. They say sites like whocalled.us track complaints and questions about calls from specific numbers.

There is an app in the Android Market (I refuse to call it anything else) that works awesome and is free for those who may need it for something like this. It is called Reverse Lookup. I am not the developer, but have used it for a few years now. It's a shame you even need it for this kind of thing.

I have also been receiving these types of calls here in the UK, for about the last couple of months...

The calls I have been getting are from the Manchester area, sometimes also a London code..

I have never answered one of these calls, the main reason is because they don't give you time to answer because it only rings once...

So what is the point of making a call if they don't give you time to answer?

They can't make money from you if you don't answer, can they?

But thanks for the heads up though, at least I know from now on....

sled735
Just want to give you all a "heads up" about this scam that's going across the country.
The BBB says this scam is more effective than others because it doesn't raise any red flags.

Take a look at your phone before you answer it to see where the call is coming from! The calls usually come from numbers with area codes 268, 809, 876, 284 and 473, and come from Antigua.

I don't know if you are saying they all come from Antigua but that is incorrect. Those are country codes to different countries.
268- Antigua/Barbados
809- Dominican Republic
876- Jamaica
284- British Virgin Islands
473- Grenada

I worked as an international operator years ago and these are country codes not area codes.

I am not surprised they come from these countries because when I worked as an operator these countries were the most annoying when calling. We had a Jamaican guy who called ALL day and would say some very vulgar things to females. The kids in Grenada asked us to adopt them on a regular basis. The Dominican Republic kids would call and either ask questions about the US or ask to be adopted. They used phone booths set up in various parts of the country where they could call family collect or using a credit card. Let me say that very few calls we received from these countries were legit. The majority were a waste of time and people playing on the phones.

Personally I never answer a number i don't know and I can recognize a foreign number and that is only because of my previous job. I also google any number I don't know even if it is a local number. I never just call it back. Now maybe 10yrs ago I would not have done all this but times have changed and people are out to get anything they can from you.

My policy is that if I don't know a number then you better leave a message because I don't answer unknown calls.

If it is important they will leave a message.

reply to post by sled735


I have been known to answer an unknown number call upon occasion but I have never called one back without googling the number first ever since the technology has been available- especially on my cell phone as it eats up time and money! Also if a caller doesn't consider the call important enough to leave a message then I don't consider them important enough for me to call back!

My wife got one yesterday.
We never answer strange numbers and looked it up and saw the top Google results were about this scam.

It's legit folks, don't ever answer or call any strange numbers back, ever.
Rule of thumb.

i use a pay as you go contract....so it has none of my info ....i will call them back and leave it on for 2 weeks....i have no bill.

sled735
Just want to give you all a "heads up" about this scam that's going across the country.
The BBB says this scam is more effective than others because it doesn't raise any red flags.

Take a look at your phone before you answer it to see where the call is coming from! The calls usually come from numbers with area codes 268, 809, 876, 284 and 473, and come from Antigua.

www.wbir.com...

A new phone scam is sweeping the country, including East Tennessee.

Scammers overseas buy or steal lists of US cell phone numbers and use computers to mass dial. Your phone will ring just once-- long enough to generate a missed call. When you call back, the scammers charge you $20 for the call and another $9 for every minute you spend on the line.

NBC News says if you're really tempted to call back, you should plug the number into Google first. They say sites like whocalled.us track complaints and questions about calls from specific numbers.

our business phone gets these calls all the time.....drives us crazy....and because we thought we were losing customers, we did call back the first few times....got nothing but dead tone if I remember correctly.

thanks for the heads up

reply to post by sled735

A new phone scam is sweeping the country, including East Tennessee.

This made me chuckle.

I always thought Tennessee was a part of the Country.

Peace

I got one of these calls while I was on my phones browser. I was looking at my screen when the call came in finger poised. I tried to answer nearly immediately but my phone just sort of lagged a split second and then it was missed. What really struck me as strange was moments after the call I receive a blank text message from the same number. I tried to reply back and got the old "this is a landline and can't receive messages" notice. I know landlines can select an option on my voicemail to send a text to me but this didn't come in the format those do.

This scam has been going for years, we were doing an AdWords campaign for our business 18 months ago and mistakenly did it worldwide instead of London.. were inundated with these calls.. although most came from south east Asia, Vietnam in particular.

reply to post by Metallicus


I'm with you on this one. I don't answer unknown number calls, and I figure the same; If it's important, they will leave a message. Later, Syx.

I was just now looking on my phone list of phone #'s on the screen, and right there is a 268 area code unknown incoming. Thanks for this thread.

jude11
reply to post by sled735

 

A new phone scam is sweeping the country, including East Tennessee.

This made me chuckle.

I always thought Tennessee was a part of the Country.

Peace

East TN is in a class of it's own, apparently. LOL

I guess they worded it that way because this is where the source came from. But still, that didn't sound right did it?

reply to post by mblahnikluver

I don't know if you are saying they all come from Antigua but that is incorrect. Those are country codes to different countries.

That's what they said in the source. But the word USUALLY is in there, not ALL of them. And they used the words "area codes".

Thanks for the extra information. That will come in handy.

So you are saying I didn't win the Antigua lottery?

Shucks...

reply to post by sled735


My mom and I both received this scam call - I plugged the number into Google first and then warned her.

cosmicexplorer
i use a pay as you go contract....so it has none of my info ....i will call them back and leave it on for 2 weeks....i have no bill.

But, would that not use up all of those minutes you paid for by leaving it on two weeks?

reply to post by Mindless1980


my plan is unlimited everything...the only thing i could see it doing would be disconnecting it if I tried to call...my phone has none of my information...