A report and warning from regular Thurles.Info reader and contributor Mr Gerard Connaughton.
Mr Connaughton states, “I received a missed call this morning (23/06/2016) from +25244851237.
A quick check on Google reveals that this number originates in Somalia and is actually a scam. Apparently if I had answered this call I would have heard a recording of a child crying or someone in trouble; followed by an apparent hang-up.
Most people receiving such a call on their mobile phone would, out of concern, have phoned the number back without thinking, in order to offer assistance to the person apparently sounding in trouble. Then they would have been subjected to a scam of some sort. A lot of Irish people would be particularly susceptible to this scam at present, with children / relatives currently abroad on summer student visas and of course in France at the Euros.
I have pasted the official warning from ComReg below which is disappointingly vague and doesn’t mention the variant of the number that called me ending in 7. I strongly recommend Thurles.Info readers do not answer any calls with country code +252 coming up on their phones, unless they have a relative in Somalia.
As stated ComReg have already been made aware of the number that is attempting to contact people. The number in question is 25244851232 and the last digit can sometimes also be either 3 or 6.
ComReg would advise all consumers to be on their guard, regarding calls of this nature.
To Gerard goes our thanks for his expeditious warning.
Thanks for the warning.
One other of our readership got a call but it ended in 9. All the other digits were exactly the same. Which means they must have a few call numbers on the go.
I missed a call from same number ending in 7.
Great to get the heads-up from thurles.info – a cool public service!
If that number is registered as a premium rate number in Somalia, they would make money automatically everytime someone returns a call. Money transferred from our phone credit account to theirs by the mobile phone companies!