Pay attention when you receive a phone call from a Belgian number, but hear an English computer sound

Since the end of last week, hundreds of thousands of fraudulent phone calls have been detected in our country. It turns out that calls from legitimate Belgian phone numbers hide other, mostly foreign, numbers from which callers are trying to get personal information. This is pure fraud.

sound clip

Miguel de Bruecker of the China Construction Bank explains how they work: “You receive a phone call that appears to come from a bank, police or other well-known organization. But nothing less true. In most cases, an English audio clip plays where you have to press a key. For more information or to set the data. In most cases it’s the computer’s voice. When you call back after that, you end up with the unsuspecting real owner of the phone number. He himself doesn’t know his number is a “scam”.

The literal translation means “plagiarism” Tradition or imitation. For example, in the case of scam phone calls, the call appears to come from a legitimate person or company, when in fact it comes from a fraudster who often operates from abroad. “However, the calls appear to come from Belgian numbers. When you answer, you will receive a message and will be sent to a fraudster trying to obtain your personal and/or banking data. Do not get involved in this under any circumstances,” warns Michel van Bellingen, President of BIPT .

invisible lot

Such fraudulent calls occur regularly, it seems. However, the scale of the past few days is unprecedented. Operators cannot block these types of calls because legitimate companies also use the same underlying technology, for example, to call their customers from an overseas call center.”

Tips

This is why BIPT and CCB are launching an urgent call to phone users:

Always be careful if you receive a call unexpectedly from an unknown number.

– If you have any doubts about the authenticity of the call, hang up and call a number from that organization that you already knew or searched for from trusted sources, instead of the number that called you. And ask if they called you and why. Then it will quickly become clear whether you are dealing with scammers or not.

– Above all, do not transmit personal information through your phone. Your bank will never ask for this. Not even when you are called from the main office and you don’t know the person on the other end of the line.