Cellular phone rip off?
 

A question for the wise!

If I am in country 'x' and I call a normal cellphone number in that same country, but the receiver of the call is outside the country, I pay for a normal call at the normal rate (or it comes out of the bundled minutes,) and the receiver pays the international charges. That at least has always been my understanding and observation.

A friend of mine (in UK) had a huge bill after calling what looked like a normal UK number (07801 .....), he was in the UK and called from his UK cellphone. It's a bit of a long story but behind it is an internet 'love' scam'.

He reckons that the other person was in ..... guess .... Nigeria .... and had some way of charging the international leg of the call back to the caller. Does this make sense?

His UK cellphone provider are 'investigating' but so far cannot offer a plausible explanation.

To me, the above scenario is impossible and doesn't make sense.

simple explanation, his phone has been hacked
did he like to receive texts and pix from his Nigerian girlfriend? One of them was probably bombed in some way. I'll bet there was no security software on the phone......what model was it?
The phone's been making hidden calls to an overseas premium rate phone line. There'd be no overt sign of the call - it all happens in the background.er
Other possibility is that its sending thousands of spam texts


You need to make sure the handset is reset back to defaults - everything wiped. However it may be best to do that AFTER you've got a detailed statement from the phone company, and then matched the statement line by line with the history from the phone and / or simcard.
However just remember that in the meantime the phone could still be racking up calls without your knowledge

I've got a computer at home at the moment that was hijacked in a similar way - it was used in a cinema as a VOIP phone switch and had somehow been hacked to continuously ring a Nigerian number. The thing is running a Linux distribution, which was abandoned years ago as vulnerable - but the fools were still using it

Thanks Milo.

He is, like me, a Luddite, and has a simple basic Nokia handset (2730 I think). He says he only received texts and neither sent nor received pix/MMSs. That is most likely correct as he would not know how to send an MMS and his phone is probably not set up to receive them, I know mine isn't even though it is apparently capable.

I've just spoken to him and he doesn't see how his handset could have been compromised, he got it new and unlocked from a Nokia Care shop and put his O2 card into it.

Anyway, can you confirm at least that my initial contention, that it is not possible to call a normal UK number and get billed for an international/premium call, is correct?

If so, that helps somewhat in getting closer to the problem.

Aren't some UK 07 numbers private premium jobs?

Yes, 070 type numbers, but 078,077, etc are normal as far as I know.

Yes you only get billed whatever number you dialled at whatever rate your tariff dictates.

I reckon Milo jumped to conclusions too quickly and there is potentially more to the story than meets the eye because it sounds like a very tall tale at the moment (sounds a lot like one of those chain mail emails that go around that have no resemblance on reality .... you know, the "IF ANYONE CALLS AND ASKS YOU TO DIAL XYZ THEN DON'T WHATEVER YOU DO OTHERWISE THEY GET FREE INTERNATIONAL CALLS FOREVER AND THIS HAS BEEN CHECKED BY THE POLICE AND EVERYTHING IT'S COMPLETELY TRUE SO DON'T DO IT. P.S. DON'T FORGET TO FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW." sort of thing).