Damn Them Scams

This is an urgent public service announcement. Sounds important? Well, it is.

There is a scam that appears to be targetting mobile phone users whereby a premium international calls service provider in China is calling mobile phones randomly and hanging up immediately. This will show up as a missed call and may prompt some mobile phone users to hit the "call back" button. When they do, they're routed to a voice recording, in Chinese, telling them that they've won a prize. Meanwhile, this premium service provider charges premium rates for the call to the mobile phone subscriber's service provider. Scumbags! I have a few other choice words but they're unfortunately not suitable for the Internet.

When I heard of this last week, I thought it might not be all that rampant... until I received a call myself yesterday. They didn't get me cos I was hip to the scam. Too bad for them. With knowledge comes power. Let all your friends and family know about this scam and do not return calls to numbers starting with +861 unless you're absolutely sure who the caller is.

I am not sure if they are targetting mobile phone users in other regions but its better to be safe than sorry.

PS. The number that appeared on my phone was +6813592795490.