Fed up with nuisance calls? Spain is taking more action to help spot the good from the bad calls...

https://spanishnewstoday.com/spain_t...0267348-a.html

Good. I signed up to Lista Robinson years ago but it didn't seem to do any good, especially in stopping calls from energy providers. Just these last few weeks they seem to have almost stopped, though. Yesterday I got an SMS message purporting to be about a transaction for €2996 on my Cajamar account - except I don't have a Cajamar account, so at least that one was easy to spot!

I had a (genuine) email from Sabadell yesterday:-

'From now on you will start receiving this type of messaging

SMS fraud has become a very common technique cybercriminals use to try to usurp the identity of trusted entities.

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For stronger security, we are adding RCS (Rich Communication Services). This format, which you will receive in the same Message area, will replace traditional SMS (with some exceptions) and will show to you the verified sender so you can easily identify their authenticity.'

Yes, I got that one too. By the way, have you seen the message in the Correspondence section about yet more changes they are making to account charges?

This will be great, I can just block all incoming calls from coming from numbers beginning with 400 on the router, and I guess it will be possible to find an app for Android which can do the same thing.

I also signed up to Lists Robinson' some years ago and I get very few spam phone calls . My wife for some reason hasn't signed up and she gets calls re internet and energy all the time. I have twice received messages alleging to be from booking.com one was stolen Nd two years ago and one about two weeks ago, both asked me to confirm seperate actual bookings with a link to do so? Both had the full information re my actual bookings and appeared to be genuine. I never opened the links I contacted.both the hotels and Booking.com via their site to be told neither hotel or Booking.com had sent any message! The first time when I got to the hotel our room was upgraded to a very large and swish suite as an apology. Sadly these thieves are out there and one has to be careful.

Thanks for flagging that up Lynn (I have PM-ed you) I will start another thread for this issue.

Something is rotten somewhere.

The signal I get from my current provide at home (Lobster on Movistar) is marginal so I'd been thinking of switching to Orange and bought their cheapest PAYG SIM to try it out, I made ZERO calls and gave the number to NO ONE yet within a couple of hours of putting the SIM in a spare phone live I received 4 spam calls!

How/where did they get my number form?

I am not an expert but I would say:-

a) I doubt you are the first to have that number

b) Don't they use some sort of automatic system that just calls all numbers in rotation?

I am with O2 and I now receive very few of these calls and when I do I never answer them and always block them

When you activate a new SIM and given a number, you're given a number in a new block of numbers, and this is public info so you and everyone else in your block of numbers is moved to the top of the spam lists.

First thing you can do is log into your Orange account and turn everything in marketing preferences to off.

Next is to not to answer a call from a landline number (beginning with 9) that you don't know and you're not expecting e.g. any parcel delivery or call from the doctor or town hall, etc... don't answer it, just silence it. Eventually the number of calls goes down.

When spam calls move to 400 then it'll be very easy to block them all. Most spam calls have already been successfully stopped from mobile numbers and international numbers over the past couple of years.

I'm always confused as to what to do in these cases.

Recent legal changes have forced "corporate communication" to use landline numbers and not mobile numbers (apparently illegal now for such purposes), but I still get quite a few calls from mobile numbers that turn out to be nothing but spam. Though at the same time I must say I rarely get spammed from landline calls.

What's worse is that a lot of it is just "bots" calling and even trying to interact with you, so it's not even a real person you're dealing with. Scary times and it won't get any better with technology moving forward...

You can usually tell if a call is from a spam automated set up as there is usually a delay before anyone speaks, so what I do is never answer before anyone speaks and if delay is more than a couple of seconds hang up, if it's a genuine call they will ring back. Secondly with these calls if unrecognised number and it's a Spanish number and I do answer I do so in English which is usually enough to put spammers off and they usually hang up. If it's from an unknown English number I respond in Spanish and generally again they hang up. I don't get that many spam calls these days maybe one a month but I did used to get more but not for last couple of years.

I got another text this week supposedly about a suspicious transaction on my (non-existent) Santander account. This time they'd upped the ante though, and the transaction amount was €8,456! I wonder if they'll keep trying with all the different bank names until they hit on the right one?

Yes, that is absolutely the best way to deal with numbers that you don't recognise. Even if you do hang around you can tell very quickly that you're dealing with a bot, though technology is only going to get better and "smarter." Apparently nowadays they can even emulate other people's voices so those scamming methods will continue to evolve...

That's the classic one, to get your login details via a fake bank site. Then there's the one to get your CC details by claiming that some minute payment is still required to complete delivery of your internet order. And then that 80 cents becomes whatever your cars will approve until it hits the limit or is flagged by bank staff...