These short-duration scam calls have but one goal. To trick you into calling back. And ultimately charge you for calling international or premium numbers.
The one-ring phone scam is not new at all. However, it has been making a big comeback in United States in last few months.
Years ago, it first originated in Japan – that’s why it’s sometimes called “wangiri spam”. Wangiri is a Japanese word for “drop after one ring”. Which is exactly what a “one-ring” or “wangiri” scam call does.
How does the one-ring scam look like?
You receive a call that cuts off almost immediately (usually as soon as the phone rings). If you’re not careful enough, you call back – and just by calling, you loose a lot of money. Even though the missed call appears to be a US area code.
It’s because criminals often use the so called caller ID “spoofing”. They’re falsifying the information transmitted to your caller ID display to hide their identity (and trick you to believe they call from a US number).
However, if you’re not careful enough and return the call, you’ll be connected to a phone number outside the United States. And, later, charged expensive international call rates.
Protect your phone against scam calls
What to do to stay safe? If you own a mobile with Android, you can consider yourself lucky. Because you can get a free protection aganist spam calls. Follow these steps:
- Get the Should I Answer app.
- Run the app, choose the Active protection and then the Block negative calls option.
- Whenever a fraud number tries to call you, the app blocks it in advance.
- If the spam number isn’t in our database yet, you can report it as a spam by adding a negative review.
- And done! No more spam calls for you 🙂