Beware of scam text messages | Lokki

“Hi, I tried to call you, call me back at xxx, kisses” is the message that has arrived on many mobile phones in recent days. It seems like a harmless text message and at first instinct it may make you curious to open it and understand who sent it to us, but behind the friendly invitation there is actually an attempted scam.

It is not immediately obvious, but some details of this text message should alarm us: the first is that it is an unknown number, i.e. not saved in our address book; the second is that it starts with ’89’, so it is a high-rate number. If the person who received it accepts the invitation to call back, he receives an immediate response, but without speaking to the interlocutor. In fact, the aim is to keep the victim on the phone for as long as possible to reduce the credit and charge the cost of the call, which according to what the Postal Police reported can reach 1.5 euros per second.

The ping call phenomenon

This new practice is called «ping call» and has the aim of emptying the telephone credit of your SIM or, even worse, of your account if it is connected to the SIM for the payment of any active promos.
The most common ploy for this type of scam, aimed at making the call last as long as possible, is the classic music on hold. On the contrary, those who manage to answer these calls find nothing but silence. This telephone scam consists of diverting the call to a pay line which quickly drains all the credit present in the cell phone’s SIM. In the worst case scenario, the scammers also manage to steal the personal data of the unfortunate person.

Desire

Another phenomenon to pay attention to is vishing: the characteristic of this particular telephone scam is that you have the impression of speaking with a real telephone operator when in reality it is just a system to steal sensitive data and private information. Very often the fake operator uses psychological tricks, such as representing a fake problem to the interlocutor, making him believe that he needs certain personal data to help him.

How to protect yourself?

The tips to avoid falling into a trap are few and simple but fundamental: do not call back unknown numbers, do not send messages (even so you can «hook» the scammer) and, in general, do not open links contained in text messages or messages from other messaging systems connected to those numbers. A further precaution could be to ask your operator to block calls from abroad, or to block the number from which you received the text message to prevent it from sending others or making calls.