BBC NEWS | Business | Scam jams Japanese phone lines
“…Phone lines in Osaka and the surrounding region were jammed on Monday – the second time this month – as a result of multiple calls made mechanically by one company.
The company involved has over 200 phone lines and programmes them via a machine to make calls every few seconds to different mobile phone numbers.
The phone hangs up after just one ring leaving a number to call back.
If the people at the other end of the line do call back then they get a recorded message of some kind, sometimes for a sex service, and are charged a premium rate for the call by the subscriber at the other end…”
Obviously a gigantic pain in the arse and the volume of calls killed cell service for hours apparently. As much as I hate spam, hats off to the pyschological ingenuity of this approach – I mean if you have a call and someone hangs up, you automatically dial the number, right? I dunno, multi-millionaire Nigerian generals needing your help with ‘funds re-allocation’ is soooo last year :-)