This could be a BGO, a “Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious” as we say, but we thought it might be useful to remind not to answer the telephone if you do not know who is calling. The actual number, not a new number for a business you might expected to know of. The scams are only increasing, the ruses improving and so it seems the topic is not well enough understood.
This includes the “one ring” scam. If your telephone rings once and then drops do not call the number unless, of course, you know the number.
While scam phone numbers can be from any area code, we have listed some of the ones that are well known scammer international area codes.
232—Sierra Leone
242 — Bahamas
246 — Barbados
268 — Antigua
284 — British Virgin Islands
345 — Cayman Islands
441 — Bermuda
473 — Grenada, Carriacou, and Petite Martinique
649 — Turks and Caicos
664 — Montserrat
721 — Sint Maarten
758 — St. Lucia
767 — Dominica
784 — St. Vincent and Grenadines
809, 829, and 849 — The Dominican Republic
868 — Trinidad and Tobago
869 — St. Kitts and Nevis
876 — Jamaica
If you are charged for picking up a scam call, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommends contacting your phone company to try and take care of the matter. You can also file a complaint about the call with the FCC. While they cannot resolve complaints, they at least sometimes get the information to your provider and it helps them keep a pulse on what is going on.
To read more on the topic click here to see a Reader’s Digest article.
Photo credit: Image by Firmbee from Pixabay