A fresh wave of bogus phone call scams has swept the county once again, with phone users being warned not to answer any phone calls from suspicious numbers.

Donegal residents have told Donegal Daily that they have been plagued by these bogus calls over the past couple of days from countries such as Libya and Macedonia, with area codes +218 and +389 respectively.

This is the third time in recent weeks Donegal phone users have been targeted by these scammers, with previous calls being registered as coming from Pacific and African countries including Vanuatu, Mauritania, the Seychelles, Tonga and Nauru. Numbers begin with codes such as +676, +674, +222 and +235.

The scammers will call your phone for a few seconds before hanging up, and when you ring back they will drain your credit.

If the victim calls the number back sometimes scammers will play bizarre prerecorded voicemails in a bid to make you stay on the phone longer, including someone calling for help and a woman saying “I’ve been waiting for you.”

This type of scam, known as Wangiri fraud, can be difficult to detect as they seem like genuine calls.

Ireland’s communications regulator ComReg is asking people to be vigilant and encourages phone users to ignore such calls.

ComReg advises taking the following precautions:

• Avoid answering calls from numbers that you cannot identify, especially if you are not expecting a call.
• Hang up immediately, on calls where there appears to be no recipient on the other end.
• Be wary of multiple calls being received from the same number.
• Do not call back any number that leaves you a blank voicemail message.
• Do not provide any personal information for example – banking details/PPS number/credit card details/name and address/passport number etc.

Unfortunately there is no way to identify a scam call number, and they can resemble a very normal, familiar, geographical or international number that we would come across on a daily basis

Have you received unusual calls recently? Let us know in the comments below.