LONDON, Aug. 01, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Urgent advice on how to deal with nuisance callers has been shared by Leading free reverse phone lookup service Who Called Me after a recent study found that 16% of UK consumers reported losing money to a phone scam in the last year.
The study by Hiya found that those who were scammed lost £632 on average, with industry leaders calling for the public to be extra vigilant when answering the phone to unknown or private phone callers.
Who Called allows users to search a phone number that has called them and flags suspected bogus callers through reports from others who have received a call from the same number. It is able to reveal the caller’s identity and location to allow the user to make a decision on whether to answer calls from a specific number in future.
Calls are logged on a colour coded level with red marking dangerous numbers, orange meaning harassing, grey as unknown, blue for neutral and green for safe.
Yasin Kultur at Who Called said: “We receive reports from different individuals daily reporting numbers they do not recognise and give them a rating which provides information on whether the call is dangerous, harassing, unknown, neutral or safe. This is a proven method to check a number using all the data from real experiences of people.”
“With the level of phone scams now reaching unprecedented levels, it has never been more important for the public to be vigilant and report any suspicious calls they receive to help warn others of a potential threat.
“Research has found that scammers are no longer just targeting the elderly and vulnerable, so we are all at risk and we must take steps to mitigate against scammers who are seeking to defraud us.”
Yasin Kultur highlighted that most fraud activity and scam payments are generated by callers making a returning call to the unknown, unrecognised number with scammers deliberately hanging up before the receiver has an opportunity to answer, encouraging a return call to a premium rate number.
Yasin added: “There will always be scams and fraud activities targeting innocent people, but if we all share our experience for numbers called or texted us, we can help each other and make it safer for all of us. No one deserves to be scammed and be subject to losses unfairly.”
For more information about how to protect against nuisance callers, visit whocalled.co.uk.
