It's bad enough with telephone service providers phoning at all times of the day with offers that we didn't ask them for (spamming) but now there are the international-call scams.

Given that the majority of our readers are foreigners who live in this part of Spain (or those that have relatives here) then receiving an international call is not suspicious in itself.

You get a call from another country (if you know a few country, dialling codes you might have an idea where they are coming from) but they almost immediately hang up before you have had the chance to answer, or as soon as you do answer.

The scam is when you phone them back to see who it was, which will prove to be very expensive – don’t call back if you don’t know the number, or especially if it is coming from Nigeria or some Baltic or Balkan State. No offence, eh!

Most of us use Whatsapp now, so this is not a problem but what you have to watch out for is how you answer the phone. Do not, under any circumstances, pick up and say, “Yes, who is this please” or “Sí” if you’re having a polyglot moment.

If you do, you might suddenly find that you have agreed to all kinds of phone services, or worse, taken out a bank loan. You see, scammers are now using AI to harvest people’s voice patterns.

If you are going to answer the phone, just say, “Diga,” or even better, wait until the person on the other end of the line speaks – it might not even be a human speaking, but whichever way, just hang up.

At the Gazette, we have the problem because people phone us for advertising so we get calls from unknown numbers, which is why we prefer getting an email enquiry. We’ve propably lost quite a few possible clients but as our contact details are out there on Internet, we constantly get targeted with spam calls.

There is the Robinson List which is a service you can use if you get harassed by spam callers; you give them the number, or email address if it is that kind of spam, and they get it blocked. Trouble is, these spammers have dozens of numbers, so even if you block one number on your mobile, they come back with another similar number.

Just block the number. If somebody does genuinely want to get hold of you, they will.

(News: Spain)

Keywords: International Callers, Spammer, AI Voice Pattern Copying, Robinson List

news, spain, international callers, spammer, ai voice pattern copying, robinson list

Reader’s comment: “On the subject of scams, it looks like Correos is leaking information. You get a text saying your parcel is being halted, and you need to give better address information and pay a small fee. If you check the URL, it’s not from the Correos site. This has happened to me twice now, and I had a parcel in transit both times, so possibly Correos is leaking or maybe the scammers have found a way to scrape the tracking sites. The fact that you have a parcel on the way makes it more plausible. Must confess, they nearly had me the first time.” – Darren