Qatar’s leading telecommunications company Ooredoo has advised resident to be cautious if they receive calls or text from suspicious or unrecognised numbers particularly if the caller is seeking personal or financial information.

Fraudulent callers in Qatar do make unsuspecting residents a target, however, we continuously warn the public by conducting awareness campaigns for their protection, Fatima Sultan al-Kuwari, the Director for Community and Public Relations at Ooredoo said.

Ooredoo recently began sending the following message to its users for their awareness,

“Dear customer, beware of scam calls or messages asking for your banking or credit card details. Remember, anybody who asks you for this over the phone does not represent Ooredoo. If you get any suspicious calls, no matter what reason they say, no matter how tempting the ‘prize’ or offer is, do not share any information with them. Instead email the number to FraudControl@ooredoo.qa.”

The most common way in which scamsters target people in by luring them in with a bait such as ‘winning a cash prize’, scams in which this technique has been used has become common in the past couple of years. Victims of this scam are made to divulge sensitive personal and financial information by making them believe that the information is needed to award them the prize, al-Kuwari said.

Another scam technique that has become popular in the recent times is ‘spoofing’ in which the scamsters uses fake caller IDs to extract information from unsuspecting victims by posing as an official of authority. While contacting its subscribers Ooredoo always makes uses of its official landline in Qatar and no third party numbers are used neither does Ooredoo ask its subscribers to provide any kind of personal or financial information over the phone, al-Kuwari pointed out.

According to the Independent US government agency Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ‘spoofing’ is said to have occurred when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to the caller ID in order to disguise their identity.

Spoofing is often used in order to trick someone into giving away valuable personal information so it can be used in fraudulent activity or sold illegally, the FCC website says.

In order to combat these scams and fraud schemes it is highly important the public be well-informed about these issues and necessary action be taken after such an incident has occurred, al-Kuwari added.

“It is natural that with the advancement of technology scamsters and fraudsters too will become sophisticated in their techniques due to which many people fall for these tricks, however, with adequate awareness generation among the masses these issues can be combated effectively”, al-Kuwari stressed.

 

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