Phone calls from Belgium

tomdublin said:
Can't help wondering whether the authorities are really serious about stopping it.
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The organised crime groups behind these scams exploit the countries with the weakest controls around spoofing numbers. I assume Belgium is a weak link.

I got two calls last November which I answered as I would very rarely get a legitimate call from a Belgian number. It was dead at the other end.

None since.
 
Whether or not the scam is physically located in Belgium it's been going on for months and it's fair to ask why it hasn't been shut down by now. Same applies to many other phone scams as well.
 
tomdublin said:
Whether or not the scam is physically located in Belgium
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It’s almost certainly an organised crime group on a different continent.

tomdublin said:
it's been going on for months and it's fair to ask why it hasn't been shut down by now.
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My guess is that systems run by Belgian telcos and/or the Belgian regulatory framework are weak.

You can report it to the Belgian regulator here. I know from experience the more reports they get the more possible it is for them to act.
 
tomdublin said:
it's been going on for months and it's fair to ask why it hasn't been shut down by now.
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What Ireland badly needs is a statutory body responsible for the regulation of the electronic communications sector, we could call it COMREG, or something equally as smart.
That would sort it pdq.
 
There are likely to be hundreds if not thousands of victims by now, so authorities in Belgium and elsewhere (should) be aware of it.
 
tomdublin said:
There are likely to be hundreds if not thousands of victims by now, so authorities in Belgium and elsewhere (should) be aware of it.
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They are, in some cases they have been successful. Tracking them isn't trivial and a really organised fraudster may well have vanished by the time the gears if international law enforcement turn.
 
The person at the other end of the line is often effectively a modern slave in an illegal fraud factory like these:

www.bbc.com

Hundreds of foreigners freed from Myanmar's scam centres

Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has pledged to close scam centres along the Thai-Myanmar border.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

news.sky.com

'They fall in love with me': Inside the fraud factories driving the online scam boom

Based in heavily guarded compounds, these scam centres are spread across South east Asia. Sky News has gone undercover to expose the reality of life inside for thousands of workers who are caught in a criminal web.
news.sky.com news.sky.com
 
I went through lengthy periods of receiving no scam calls and then might get two successive days of 5 or 6 calls per day ! For some time now I've blocked all numbers other than those in my contacts. The genuine caller can leave a message and I'll return the call. Works well for me.
 
I got 3 calls from Belgium in quick succession. Each time i rejected the call by pressing hangup, another call immediately arrived from a different number. All within 20 seconds. Very annoying.
Their auto-dialler must be on overdrive...
 
There is a current scam going around, a message from Revenue, about claiming your tax credits.. click on an official-looking link.
It all looks legit when you link to a website.

Revenue do not contact people by phone, text or email.
This was claimed on RTE radio one, by Joe Duffy.

I have to say this is incorrect - Revenue do contact chargeable taxpayers, certainly by email.
 
I have been getting calls from Belgium recently too. I rarely answer calls from numbers that I don't recognise, my thought process being that if it is a genuine important call they will leave a voicemail or send a follow-up email/letter.
 
TrundleAlong said:
I seldom use my mobile phone. I don't even know my own phone number. Yet the scammers from Belgium were able to phone me. :oops:
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No they didn't phone you - they just phone numbers one after another and eventually they get an actual number

And they are in all probability not in Belgium but have setup their phone to make it look like the call is coming from a Belgian number
 
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