False voicemail notifications - scam?

[Captain Colonial]

Both the mobile phones in the house (Lebara) have been getting text messages saying we have a new voicemail, even though the phone hasn’t rung.  When we call the voicemail number, there is a voicemail message but it’s silent and only lasts one or two seconds.  Is this a fluke or a scam?

[Mark Stanton]

Quite often they're a scam - sometimes you're connected to a high rate costly number where you get charged a fortune. Lebara use vodaphone system I believe - check your account costs, just in case.

[Blatman]

Yeah don't dial from the link or number displayed in the text. Dial your own voicemail number from wherever you have it saved.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Yeah, you'd be staggered just how expensive some of the highest of the premium numbers the scammers use can be; even for the shortest duration calls. - it can be three figures!

[corsechris]

Boggles my mind that the telco operators are allowed to set up these sort of things. Of course, they take their cut so why would they care.

[Captain Colonial]

What I don’t understand is how I’m getting silent voicemails without my phone ringing.  I get the voicemail text message, then dial my voicemail on 121 manually (completely avoiding the text message) and find I have a blank message.  Weird.

[Mark Stanton]

Call me cynical by all means - Lebara is an Indian based company that provides cost effective mobile sim cards - in the UK they "piggy back" onto vodafone system.

 

However as a customer of an Indian based company, chances are they will have your details on their database, where laws regarding release of info are different - I would ask where do we receive the most nuisance calls from on our mobiles and landlines - for me its India. The technology they have for random number dialling is first rate and I suspect it's also available to leave messages/texts to try and hook you into calling some expensive rate number.

 

Maybe I'm adding 2+2 and its 5 ?  or possibly it's a very annoying coincidence ?  Did you have these nuisance messages on other service providers ?

 

[Captain Colonial]

6 minutes ago, Mark Stanton said:

Did you have these nuisance messages on other service providers ?

Nope.