2023-06-18 04:40:46
Tony contacted us via the orange Alert Us button to report the constant calls he receives on his landline. Calls from abroad who call several times a day sometimes. “What is it for and who does it benefit?”, he asks himself. Faced with this problem, Olivier Bogaert of the Computer Crime Unit gives advice.
“We receive on our Proximus fixed line, at irregular intervals, telephone calls from Italy, Spain and Germany. We have no correspondents or contacts in these countries”, sends Tony to us via the orange Alert Us button. This Waterloo resident and his wife feel harassed and are tired of these incessant calls that can come up at any time: “What bothers us is being called at all hours of the day… When are the calls during the night?”
“But worst of all: we are unable to get these calls stopped. Unable to block the number because each call is from a different number!”, s’indigne Tony. “How do I stop this harassment, without having to delete my number?”, he wonders helplessly.
And Tony has tried several actions to get rid of these nuisance calls, but it seems to be mission impossible… “Making a complaint to the police is useless because these are calls from abroad, they can’t do anything. Same answer on the lBPT website. What is incredible is that these harassers can continue to call us, without limit and at their good will”, denounces Tony.
A question then runs through his mind: What is the purpose of this type of harassment and who benefits from it? And above all, what to do to stop it?
Never answer or call back these numbers
We met Olivier Bogaert, commissioner at the Federal Computer Crime Unit, to try to answer these questions. He explains that the authors behind these calls are generally looking for two things:
- Have the person call the number back. This is the primary goal of these scammers. “If the person calls back, at first, he risks hearing a voice message telling him that he must wait because the staff is currently overloaded. So the person is patient but, surprise, at the end of the month, his bill was increased because it was a premium number”he explains;
- The other element is that if the person calls back, they can come across someone who is going to pass themselves off as an official organization. “We will say to him for example: ‘We wanted to inform you that there is a problem with your bank account’. And so there, they can solicit the person and collect as much personal information as possible”.
But then, what should be done to stop receiving calls of this type?
“If the scam attempt has not been finalized, it is not at the level of a complaint and the police that something will be done”, explains Olivier Bogaert.
But, there are still tools available to citizens. Olivier Bogaert explains:
- You can contact the Belgian Cybersecurity Center by email and report that there is a scam attempt. At that time they can launch a global alert to all citizens to protect themselves. You can also report the message and the phone number through their website. The Center will thus be able to contact foreign operators to see if there is a way to block the numbers.
- But you can also report it to your operator, like Proximus for example, by contacting them directly and indicating that you are receiving all these calls intensively. The operator can then make checks.
Tips to avoid the scam
- Never answer or call back: you have to distance yourself;
- If necessary, go on the Internet, and check if this number has already been reported by other Internet users. On the platform Report-Scams, you can enter the number there and see if it has already caused a problem. You can also file a report via this page ;
- As written above, the number must also be reported on the Belgium Cybersecurity Center website;
- And finally, contact your operator.
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