Fraudsters with automated dialers never take a holiday. Here is another round-up of wangiri warnings from around the world.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
HT Eronet, one of the main operators in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told customers to be ‘extremely careful’ about calling foreign numbers after a surge in wangiri. They stated that most wangiri calls begin with the international codes for Serbia (+381), Libya (+218), Burkina Faso (+226), Kazakhstan (+77) and South Africa (+27). Read their warning here.
Italy
Italian trade website Telefonino listed a series of prefixes commonly used by wangiri fraudsters. Their advice was unusual in that they highlighted wangiri can involve tricking victims into returning calls to domestic numbers as well as using international destinations. Telefonino’s advice was that international wangiri calls most often appear to originate in the UK (+44), Tanzania (+255), Kosovo (+383), Moldova (+373) and Tunisia (+216) whilst domestic wangiri calls are most often prefixed +3902 for Milan or +3906 for Rome. Read their article here.
Spain
Popular Spanish daily newspaper La Razón explained that wangiri is not a crime because scammers are simply luring victims into making expensive phone calls that are correctly charged per the phone user’s tariff. They implied that wangiri numbers are typically from African and Asian countries, and they cited Turkmenistan, Benin, Russia and Nigeria as examples. Click here for La Razón’s article.