Ooredoo warns customers to be very wary of scam calls

With many Qatar residents complaining of receiving calls from scammers who use "Ooredoo" as their caller ID, the telecom service provider has advised customers “to be vigilant and not to trust calls from numbers displaying the caller ID ‘Ooredoo.’

"Ooredoo will always call you from the number 4420 0000 and all calls registered under the caller ID ‘Ooredoo’ are fake,” Ooredoo’s director for Community and Public Relations, Fatima Sultan A Kuwari, told Gulf Times.

A Doha resident who spoke to Gulf Times said he received a call from "Ooredoo" via the mobile application Viber and was told that he won a certain lottery. To claim the prize, he was asked to provide the ICC-ID (Integrated Circuit Card - ID) found at the back of the SIM card.

In reply to a query from this newspaper, Al Kuwari clarified that any number displayed as "Ooredoo" via third party caller display apps is not Ooredoo, and any request from the callers should be ignored and reported.

The modus operandi of the scammers is commonly known as caller ID “spoofing”.

Independent US government agency Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says spoofing occurs when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to the caller ID display to disguise their identity.

“Spoofing is often used as part of an attempt to trick someone into giving away valuable personal information so it can be used in fraudulent activity or sold illegally,” according to the FCC website.

The ICC-ID contains information about the wireless carrier and the SIM owner’s account. The ICC-ID has up to 22 digits and consists of several parts, and is used to identify the SIM globally.

The ICC-ID contains details like industry code, country code, Issuer Identification Number, year and month of manufacturing, switch configuration code, the six/seven digits of the SIM number and the checksum digit.

“I was asked by the caller, who identified himself as a representative of Ooredoo, to list down a six-digit code. He also asked me to shut down my phone and retrieve the ICC-ID, which I will provide to him once he calls back after a few minutes,” the resident said.

Another Doha resident, who received the same instructions via the Viber app, said the scammers go to great lengths to make the call sound convincing aside from using a fake caller ID.

“These scammers will make it appear, judging from the background noise, as if they are working at a call centre,” he said.

Courtesy: gulf-times.com