Beware of this latest French phone scam

Connexion reader, Malise Ruthven, shares a recent phone scam they fell victim to

A Connexion reader exposes yet another phone scam you need to look out for in France

Tero Vesalainen / Shutterstock

Published Thursday 13 April 2023 - 17:00 Modified Thursday 13 April 2023 - 17:00

Regarding your recent story about bank and similar scams, I would like to add a warning.

I recently had a phone call on my fixed line from a woman claiming to work for Orange.

She explained technicians were updating my network and gave me various numbers to call, instructing me to leave my fixed phone décroché while they made necessary adjustments.

This lasted several hours.

It happened that our handyman came by while I was on one of the calls.

He immediately suspected a scam, and told me to ring off and check with Orange.

I called the helpline and learned, to my chagrin, that the foreign-based ‘technicians’ had relieved my account of €67.

The charges had been incurred by my leaving the set off its holder, while being asked occasionally to call different French numbers.

I assume these were premium numbers, although I did not think this at the time.

I hope you can add this scam to your list in future versions of your excellent articles.

By Malise Ruthven, via email

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