Recently, a large number of people have wondered about the fact that they received many calls with a foreign number and raised a deep concern that if they listen or call back, they will lose money, or have their personal information and bank account information copied.

Be wary of receiving calls from unknown numbers. (Image shown for illustration purposes only). Photo: T.H

The Da Nang Department of Information and Communications has, over recent times, received a request from the Investigative Police Department of Son Tra District to confirm the information of some phone numbers with foreign prefixes such as+808 (Territory of Midway Islands), +98 (Iran) belong to which network operator in Viet Nam or abroad regions, territories, or countries to serve the investigation.

According to a representative of the municipal Department of Information and Communications, calls from strange numbers, including calls made via software on mobile phones, on computers or via some online websites having existing fake phone numbers in different countries, mainly to scam customers to call back to incur unintended telecommunications charges. For example, the average call charge to a satellite phone number is VND 9,000 /minute, the highest can reach VND150,000 /minute and is charged as soon as ringing.

Besides, fraud calls usually follow one of these following plots such as informing the victim that he or she owes electricity bills, has a gift package from abroad, owes a bank, violates traffic rules, or is related to other fraudsters cases being investigated such as drug trafficking, cross-border money laundering.

Fraudsters using the above-mentioned approaches aim to take advantage of the listener's psychology to ask for declaring their assets, available cash or money in bank accounts, then they threaten and seek ways to occupy the victim's property. Particularly, Viet Nam has no phone service that the listener has to pay for (including calls from international to Vietnam). In addition, copying personal information, bank accounts, appropriating money is baseless since it is impossible to penetrate the user's subscriber identity module (SIM).

As shared by Colonel Tran Muu, Deputy Director of the Da Nang Department of Police, over the past time, the unit also continuously broadcast warning information on the media and press agencies so that people can aware of and be careful with calls from unknown numbers. Phone calls related to these above-mentioned situations are all aimed at fraud and appropriation of property. Police officers always send a specific and clear invitation if they want to invite an individual to the police offices. Therefore, people should be vigilant when receiving calls from strange numbers.

Meanwhile, the representative of the Department of Information and Communications also adds more information for people. For calls and messages from international countries, there will be a plus sign (+), or 00 at the beginning and the next two numbers are not 84 (Vietnamese country code).

If receiving phone calls pretending to be the police, the People's Procuracy, the bank or the announcement of a gift from the post office, users do not follow any requests including transferring money or providing personal information to strangers via phone calls. In this case, users need to finish the call immediately and report it to the police agency for handling or notify the criminal duty helpline 0692348560 of the Criminal Police Department under the Ministry of Public Security for receiving instructions timely.

Additionally, for blinking calls from international numbers, users should only call back when being sure that it is the phone number of relatives abroad. We need to be wary of incoming calls from strange numbers and calmly verify vague and inaccurate information to avoid being taken advantage of or scammed and blackmailed

Reporting by DAC MANH- Translating by T.VY