Fun on the Phone

I just had a cold call from a number I didn't recognise. The caller introduced himself as being from an organisation with an acronym that I didn't recognise (and consequently can't remember - sorry!) working on behalf of a university I'd never heard of. He then asked if I had time to participate in a short survey. I politely declined and hung up.

I then looked at the caller display and thought there was something odd about the number, 00208-433-6080, as it began with two zeros rather than the usual one. I also noticed several other previous missed calls from the same number. Intrigued, I did a bit of googling and discovered that 00 is the way to dial an overseas number from the UK, and 20 is the international dialling code for Egypt, so the number was in fact the egyptian number 84-336-080. 84 is the area code for Faiyum, if you're interested, although I'll be surprised if the origin of the call is anywhere near there.

My first thought is that the 'survey' was just a clever social engineering tactic to get people off the phone, and that this is one of those scams where someone rings you from a premium rate number hoping you'll ring back. But international numbers, though expensive, don't benefit the caller financially, so after a few checks on the net for known phone scams, I now believe it was more elaborate than this, as described on the Australian site Scamwatch. According to this site, you can get called by someone claiming to be doing a survey which is actually nothing more than a reconnaissance excercise so they can call back later with a much more convincing scam. If they ring again I may pretend to go along with it and give them a bunch of false information, just to see if I'm right or not.

In the meantime, I thought I'd put this on the net for all to see (together with the number, 002084336080, in case anyone googles it). Basically, if you see this number in your missed calls, don't ring it back (good advice for any number you don't recognise), and if you answer a cold call make sure you know exactly who you're talking to before giving out any information about yourself.