Posted on 01/31/2014 6:38:35 AM PST by Second Amendment First
If you receive a call on your cellphone preceded by just one or two rings, chances are it’s part of the new One Ring phone scam spreading across the U.S. faster than a summer wildfire.
Here’s how it works: International scammers have programmed computers to blast out millions of calls to cellphone numbers, ring once or twice, then disconnect. The objective is to make you curious enough to dial that number back.
The “gotcha” happens when you return the call. You’ll be charged $19.95 for the international call fee itself and $9 per minute thereafter. “Oftentimes consumers say they hear music and then advertising, so they think nothing of staying on the phone. It’s easy to see how quickly charges for these international calls can add up," said Shelley Polansky, vice president of communications for Better Business Bureau Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming
Consumers who have been duped by these calls report calls coming from Dominican Republic (809), Jamaica (876), British Virgin Islands (284), Grenada (473) as well as Minnesota and Canadian area codes.
If you think you’ve are a victim of the One Ring scam, you should immediately alert your phone carrier and keep an eye on your cellphone bill. If you have not already done so, opt out of all third-party billing to your phone.
Oh come on. It’s already so far out of the fence that we’re in danger of a totalitarian society.
If you punch the number into Google, it’ll tell you who called, then Google will sell your confirmed number to the rest of them.
Then it's time to repair the fence. And that's going to take some more regs and a congress willing to enforce them.
Then it's time to repair the fence. And that's going to take some more regs and a congress willing to enforce them.
All good ideas that unfortunately ... cost money to implement. Who's going to pay that money? You and I in increased subscriber fees.
I prefer he lower cost of the service along with a lifelong absolute lack of interest into who exactly was that called me from a number I do not recognize. :-)
The cost is pretty negligible.
The cost is pretty negligible.
The cellphone companies get a % of the money. I know that Verizon was getting 40% of text message charges. I had to block all texting to stop it.
More regs to cure the overkill of too many regs. Man, you’re wayyyy out to the Left.
They often send bogus Caller ID information. If so, it's a different scam! Or it could be a very new, valid area code.
That was me, I work for Publisher's Clearing House and called to let you know you would have won $10 million had you answered the call............
The Pojarski family in Tweeton Arkansas is happy you didn't......
And how exactly, will Google get my phone number from laptop?
I receive many unwanted calls on my landline, most recorded messages about reducing credit card debt. My call blocker feature is useless since it will only block 10 numbers. Registering with state and federal do not call is also useless since many of the numbers are ghost numbers. Also, the government doesn’t have the money to go after these callers. I have seen devices for sale on Amazon and the internet that plug into my landline and will block private and out of area calls, calls where the ID is blocked. They can also be programed to block a specific number or an entire area code. Any one have any experience with these devices? Do they work?
I have no experience with those devices, but with Caller ID spoofing that may not solve the problem. My personal solution is to only give my cell number to trusted parties, all others get my land line number which is answered automatically with the fax on the all in one printer, and with the ringer turned off. I check the call log to see if there was something important. I occasionally get unknown numbers on the cell but they are probably dialed randomly or sequentially by computer and I don’t answer them.
Simple rule to follow to avoid falling for any phone scam: don’t pick up the phone if you don’t recognize the number.
Amen...words to live by.
Been getting 3 to 4 digit numbers on my Caller ID.
I have filed a complaint with the FCC.
The best way is the same as any other. DON’T Answer the call, if it isn’t on your contact list and there is no message, just a waste of time and not important. I even tell the jobs I look into, if you call my number, leave a message, I am NOT a slave to any devise. If you call with a number that can’t be called back or no message in my voice mail. Don’t expect a return call, won’t happen period.
The reason I did was that just about everyone who knows me, called me on my cell phone, especially my out of state relatives like my brother in NJ, but then all my friends and relatives and co-workers, business associates, my auto mechanic, my bank, my doctor's office and my pharmacy, the management office at my apartment complex, etc. - all my important numbers are all in my phone book so they come up on my cell phone caller ID so I know who is calling and I am very careful who I give my cell phone number out to.
It got to the point that the only calls I was getting on my land line were telemarketers or scam callers (those that ignored the Do Not Call List since my land line number was registered) or political robo calls at election time, so called "surveys" and wrong numbers.
And boy did I used to get some interesting wrong numbers on my land line.
One afternoon I came home early from work and there was a VM on my land line phone from some doctor's office trying to reach a person, a Mr. "X", who was certainly not me, saying; "We got your lab results back and it is very urgent that you call us right away, as soon as you get this message." They left a call back number so being the good person I am, I called them back to say "You left a message for one of your patients, a Mr. "X" but you called the wrong number. You might want to check your records for his correct phone number and call him on that since it sounded pretty urgent". The woman on the phone at the doctor's office apologized profusely, and then thanked me for letting them know. Another time I got a wrong number VM from a nursing home trying to reach the family of one of their patients and I did the same thing, called them back to let them know they had left a message at a wrong number.
One day I was left a very long VM message from a very irate woman trying to reach her lawn care company, complaining that they hadn't shown up as scheduled, how inconvenienced she was as a result, and expecting a call back from them ASAP. I thought about ignoring it but decided to call her back to let her know that while I sympathized with her plight, she had dialed my number by mistake and if she was expecting a call back from them, she wasn't going to get one since she hadn't left a message with them (why she didn't realize she'd dialed the wrong number when she got my personal outgoing VM message was beyond me) but she thanked me for letting her know.
On my cellphone, I do occasionally get a wrong number or a scam call but not nearly as often as I did on my old land line number. But when I do get a call from an unfamiliar number, I never, ever answer it. More often than not, they don't leave a message so I figure it's not important and I never call that number back. And in fact I often "google" the number and find it's often reported by others as some sort of scam or annoyance call. About once a month I get a call from a number that never leaves a message, I "googled" it and found was a third party vendor for my local electricity provider, offering free "energy kits". Thanks but no thanks, I'll buy my own lightbulbs.
I got a call from Iowa the other day. 515. Probably Dems asking me why I didn’t vote. They never called again, though. Dems give up easy.
That means international telephony should be free of charge, by which I mean, included within your land-line ISP bill or your cellular data plan.
A megabyte should cost what a megabyte costs, whether it be a phone call, a pic, a short movie, or a huge pile of text messages.
Concerning the current article, the carriers should be forced to eat the charges, and cough up significant additional penalties, should they resist!
Carriers should only be carrying data. They should not be payment systems. Nor should they be content providers.
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