(Un)common Sense by James Veloso
(Un)Common Sense

Crank calls

Jul 8, 2022, 1:02 AM
James Veloso

James Veloso

Writer/Columnist

The call came just as I was about to get out of our office for lunch. I checked my smartphone, and it was from a number not registered among my contacts list.

As I am a security freak (partly due to the nature of my work as a journalist, partly due to a deep-seated desire to remain private), I never give out my mobile phone number except to people I trust fully. So I decided not to answer that phone call. If that person wants to get in touch in me, why not send me an email or text message, as the proper etiquette demands?

Two weeks later, that same number called me again – this time, in the evening. Once again, I decided not to answer it, but this time I was seized with both curiosity and anxiety. This unknown number had called me TWO times, which meant that the person must’ve been desperate to try and contact me.

-o0o-

I know there are ways of looking up a phone number on the Internet (it’s very easy nowadays, unlike in past decades when you have to leaf through the entire Yellow Pages just to find that number.)

And since this number apparently came from a landline phone, not a smartphone (that phone number had eight numbers, not the ten-number sequence used by mobile telcos), I knew that there’s a much better chance this number can be traced.

So I checked the number on the Internet.

That’s when I saw on the website (free-lookup.net ) a long list of comments from other mobile phone users in the Philippines who said they have also received calls from that number.

Some commenters said they also suspected that number was a scammer and thus did not answer, while those who did said there was no reply at all from the other end and feared that their voices may be recorded.

-o0o-

“Robo-calls” – pre-recorded spam calls that were then sent to millions of phone numbers through so-called "autodialers" – as well as spam text messages have been a perennial problem of telcos not only in the Philippines but around the world, even before the Covid-19 pandemic started in 2020.

However, during the Covid-19 pandemic when contact tracing became a norm (by the way, is contact tracing now on the way out?), mobile phone users in the Philippines found themselves being flooded with spam messages.

Like spam emails, many of these messages would entice their senders to click on a link to find a job or to fix some “irregularity” with their bank account.

And computer security experts have the same advice for those receiving these spam messages: don’t click on those links.

The reason: they may be linked to a computer virus that could send the same spam messages to a person’s contacts or even hack their phone and social media accounts.

Mobile phone users could (and should) immediately block numbers sending spam messages and calls to ensure that whoever sends those messages won’t bother them again.

Telcos like Globe and Smart also said they have deactivated numbers sending spam messages and intensified their screening efforts against scammers.

-o0o-

However, some concerned users have voiced their worry that those contact-tracing forms that we have all gotten tired of filling out during the pandemic could be used by enterprising scammers.

Is it too much to ask how companies and local government units which have deployed contact-tracing forms and mobile applications how they manage the millions of phone numbers that they have accumulated to ensure their users won’t fall victim to these scams?


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