Mexico’s news has been awash with stories about phone users receiving missed calls from the UK’s +44 number range. Evidently there has been a spike in wangiri fraud activity centered on the abuse of UK mobile numbers. For example, Excélsior, one of Mexico City’s oldest daily newspapers, told readers last Monday:
En los últimos meses, múltiples usuarios en México han reportado la recepción diaria de llamadas provenientes del Reino Unido, identificables por el prefijo internacional +44. Estos intentos de comunicación generan confusión, especialmente en personas que no tienen vínculos con ese país.
Aunque algunas respuestas han sido tomadas con humor en redes sociales, especialistas advierten que este tipo de llamadas puede formar parte de un esquema de fraude telefónico conocido como “wangiri”, el cual busca obtener beneficios económicos mediante el engaño.
In recent months, multiple users in Mexico have reported receiving daily calls from the United Kingdom, identified by the international area code +44 . These attempts to communicate can cause confusion, especially for people with no ties to the country.
Although some responses have been humorous on social media, experts warn that these types of calls may be part of a telephone fraud scheme known as “wangiri”, which seeks to obtain financial gain through deception.
Television personality Mónica Noguera recorded a video warning about the scam. Police have also alerted the public; the following graphic was shared by the Directorate of Security in the city of Torreón.
Numerous telcos around the world have seen the benefit of automatically blocking short duration calls that match the peculiar traffic profile of wangiri. Others, such as Telia, have established an automated redirect of wangiri calls to recorded messages that tell the fraudster their scam has been identified. This disincentivizes wangiri fraudsters by making their calls chargeable. However, blocking and re-routing traffic is not the same as addressing the roots of crime, including the willingness of some telcos to profit by carrying illegal traffic.
Wangiri has not gone away just because it has been greatly reduced in some countries. This outbreak of wangiri fraud in Mexico is a reminder that international criminals will simply change targets if they can no longer make money by exploiting consumers somewhere else. Telcos continue to collude in these crimes. It is likely that any Mexican duped in returning one of these wangiri calls will actually be connected to a recorded message played by a system located somewhere other than the UK. That also means genuine calls to UK mobile numbers that were spoofed during this attack will not be connected as they should. The abuse of phone numbers will continue until originating and terminating telcos have all adopted a cheap and universal method of exchanging data that validates the actual origin of international calls, such as the GSMA’s Call Check service.
