The Ministry of Interior’s Information Technology Department (ITD) has informed the public about how to defend itself by using the Hiya: Spam Phone Call Blocker app, with the capacity to automatically block numbers suspected of scams.
These scam numbers can sometimes cost people large amounts of money in mobile credit if they return phone calls to them.
The announcement warns Cambodians that repeated spam calls from international numbers were being made to Cambodians as part of a call-back scam that induces people to call an International Premium Rate Number (IPRN), costing them money.
The ITD told the public that in order to defend themselves from the calls, they had to block the numbers of these spam callers, but the offenders had then just tried again using new numbers to disguise themselves.
ITD’s working group determined that in order to defend against this fraudulent activity people should install an app with the ability to determine which numbers are spam phone numbers and block them automatically.
“Hiya: Spam Phone Call Blocker is gaining in popularity because this app accesses a database with 287 million suspected spam phone numbers already in it.
“The app can help the user by blocking these phone numbers. It can be installed on mobile phones with iOS and Android by searching in the official app stores for Hiya,” the ITD announced.
The ITD added that the call-back or one-ring scam is a technique to steal money from the mobile phone accounts of victims with the use of a service called IPRN.
Organised networks of criminals have purchased IPRN services from phone companies to get access to IPRN numbers.
They then make automated phone calls to phone users around the world. These callers are usually programmed to ring once and then hang up so that the users will call them back, which cost a great deal of money relative to a normal long-distance call due to their having an IPRN number.
The National Police’s anti-cybercrime department director Chea Pov told The Post on March 22 that the department had recently discovered that a great deal of this fraudulent activity had been taking place.
He said that according to their preliminary research it was definitely a call-back scam. Victims had to use their own phone numbers to return phone calls to some foreign countries which resulted in unusually high charges to their accounts.
The anti-cybercrime department instructed all citizens not to make phone calls to numbers abroad that they didn’t recognise.
They also warned that if they receive messages about winning awards, purchases or sales at a discount below market value, please don’t reply because these are just other versions of the same scam being committed by organised criminals.
Besides this long-distance phone call scam, recently the anti-cybercrime department’s working group has received information regarding scams committed by people in Cambodia that take a similar form.
The scammers had messaged victims telling them that the victim had won a cash prize from a local bank and they have instructed the victim to top up 10 dollars to another phone account in order to collect it. They then provide them with a phone number to call – supposedly that of a bank executive – to discuss their prize afterwards, the ITD said.