Protect Yourself from Phone Scams: Bogotá’s Battle Against Extortion Calls

2024-03-02 03:13:51

In Bogotá, eight out of ten phone calls classified as spam, or unwanted, are made for extortion purposes.

Photo: Julieth Aguirre

Calls, spam messages and the tricks that criminals devise to recreate situations that encourage scams and theft have become a common denominator. The outlook in this regard, in the capital, is not encouraging. According to Nicolás Vargas Muñoz, manager of the TrueCaller app in Colombia, which allows you to identify calls and block spam from your phone, “in January 2024 alone, 40.5 million spam calls were registered in Bogotá, of which eight out of every 10 were apparently looking to scam or rob people,” he says.

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The figure is corroborated by the Prosecutor’s Office, since, according to the prosecuting body, thefts and scams through calls and sending text messages increased 84% in the pandemic period, a figure that has been maintained in the following years.

“Spam”

Telephone spam “are calls made to landlines or mobile phones, mostly for commercial purposes, which are usually made without authorization or prior request from the person being called. A fundamental characteristic is the annoyance they generate, as they are repetitive and, in some cases, can even be classified as harassment, due to the number of calls made per day,” says Vargas.

Faced with the problem, last year the “stop scrubbing” law came into force, the objective of which is to establish channels, schedules and frequency in which different entities can charge or offer products, in order to protect the right to privacy. of consumers. However, despite the fact that schedules were established (Monday to Friday from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm, Saturdays from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm and the strict prohibition of calling on Sundays and holidays), the truth It is that the perception among many people is that the siege continues.

Millionaire call

Marta Cubillos worked as a nanny in a house in the Quinta Paredes neighborhood. One afternoon he received a call in which a woman, who claimed to be the mother of the children, was crying and told him that she, along with her husband, was in a serious legal mess and that they had to pay a large sum of money. Because of the details that the woman gave her and because of the state of distress in which she seemed to be, she did not suspect.

Immediately afterwards, the alleged husband came to the phone and told Marta to put jewelry, money and valuable items in a bag, so that she could give them to someone who was going to pass by on a motorcycle to pick them up. In the midst of the emergency, she seemed convincing to him. The woman accepted and handed the bag with valuable items to a motorcyclist. Minutes later, when the homeowners arrived, she found out that she had been scammed. The losses were in the millions.

As you can see, the criminals have privileged information about the victims that gives credibility to the stratagems they use to successfully carry out their misdeeds. They know in advance, for example, family details, bank account details, emails and detailed information on the victim’s links to x and y entity, information that they use to create an atmosphere of trust and not generate any suspicion. But how do criminals manage to access their victims’ information?

The most common thing in this type of case is that companies that have large databases are victims of some type of computer crime, with the aim of stealing information, using malicious software that comes in an email or that has infected the network. an entity. In this way, they access privileged information.

“In advance they know family information, telephone numbers, emails or account information, among other specific data, which they even use to impersonate officials of some entity, since, in theory, only said entity would have that information,” he says. Luz Mercedes Cevallos, manager of Forensic and Compliance Services of the firm Cevallos Holguín, specialists in investigation and prevention against fraud and corporate corruption.

Regarding fraudulent calls, there is little regulation, in part, because tracking the numbers from which the calls come is complex. “There are providers of virtual telephone lines, which are known as VoIP, which are telephone numbers that are not associated with a specific geographic location. There are also other providers that offer more robust encryption, so that it is not possible to trace where the number comes from, which is not associated with any country, and is masked with cybersecurity measures, which in some way shield the criminal.” , explains Cevallos.

And he adds that this is not the only way: “Sometimes they also use international numbers, mostly associated with African countries, where controls are usually lower, to carry out this type of scam. It is also important to mention that these gangs try to imitate local number prefixes, or numbers related to government or banking entities, for example, in order to be able to manipulate their victim more easily.”

The outlook is cloudy. In Bogotá, on average, according to TrueCaller figures, a person can receive 11 spam calls (and countless messages) in a month, of which it is estimated that eight may try to steal or scam them. Furthermore, according to information from the National Police, last year more than 200,000 cases of telephone scams were reported, which represented a 20% increase in this type of criminal behavior, generating economic losses exceeding $100,000 million.

Protection in this type of crime depends, to a large extent, on verifying and taking extreme care. Be attentive, do not give out personal information via cell phone, do not open strange messages and update your passwords if you do not want to end up scammed.

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