A series of fraudulent flash calls attacking Icelandic phone users this week
The Director of ECOI says that there has been a flash attack of fraudulent calls from numbers from Sri Lanka and Luxembourg with the intent to get the receiver of these calls to call back, making them responsible for high service fees. mbl.is/Kristinn Magnússon
Thousands of flash calls were received by phone users in Iceland this week. The calls seem to come from Luxembourg and Sri Lanka.
Director of the Icelandic Telecommunications Authority, Hrafnkell V. Gíslason, says that it was a flash calling fraud attack and the goal was to get phone users to pay some kind of overcharged service fees for the calls.
Trying to get you to call back
“It seems to us that people get a short phone call with the intention of having people falling into the trap of calling back. This creates a potential obligation on the parties involved to pay for that call,” Gíslason says, “and the charges can reach large amounts.”
“In this way, you can be activating a phone call service where you pay a large amount of money for such calls,” he says, pointing out that the charges for these calls can also be very high, as if you call Sri Lanka.
He says that the fraudulent scammers create some kind of telecommunications service that can collect the payment obligation that arises when you call back.
