Mobile phone fraud - can this be true?

shoi

Someone is claiming that a fraudster managed to get a £100 call to Cuba billed to their mobile phone account, but didn't use their phone.  Can this be true?

(Just curious)

AnotherJoe

Is that "someone", say, perhaps a husband claiming that the phone call to a hottie in Cuba was not them?

Roger.Wilco

shoi said:

Someone is claiming that a fraudster managed to get a £100 call to Cuba billed to their mobile phone account, but didn't use their phone.  Can this be true?

(Just curious)

The way mobile phones and the associated billing equipment work - the chances of a fraudster totting up a £100 call to Cuba would be rare.  Its not impossible - but very very unlikely.  If the bill shows that the call did happen then it most likely did...  Possible ways that such a call may occur:

• Phone in pocket - screen not locked - and the random number generated by the phone bouncing around in the pocket just happened to match a Cuban number...   £100 call would be quite a few minutes - the likelihood that someone would not hangup when receiving such a call is small.
• A rogue smartphone app - like a game that dials a Cuban number...  possible - though, in Android you'd have to allow the App permissions to make phonecalls.  Unless the user is a child - then this should ring mental alarm bells.  Also ringing a normal non-premium number wouldn't make any sense as the call receiver doesn't get any monetary gain.  Unless the Cuban number is a premium rate number which would tote-up additional fees as well as the call charges.  Typically, premium numbers are restricted to geographical areas - so the chance that a Cuban telecoms operator would allow a UK number to call a premium rate number in Cuba would be unlikely for a multitude of commercial reasons.
• The Cuban number was deliberately dialed either by accident or malice...   I just checked my many years old Android phone and the call-log goes all the way back to the beginning of 2018.   So ask the mobile operator to provide an itemized call list if you cannot get it from your mobile account user web-portal.  Ask the "someone" to show their phone call record and compare against the itemized bill.  On mobiles you can clear the full call log and you can delete individual calls records - so its not fool-proof - but a few individual missing call records or a fully empty call log would be suspicious.

To be able to challenge this with a mobile operator - you or the "someone" will need to prove that the call was NOT made.  So you would have to provide the mobile's call logs and prove that the discrepancy was only this one call to Cuba.

Understand that the itemized bill that a user gets is not the only record that a mobile operator keeps regarding a phonecall.  The mobile network will record lots of data regarding the mobile and any calls made / data transferred from multiple sources.  The mobile operator if they wanted to - could pull these other records which could define the exact location where the call was made.  You would then have to prove that you were never at that address at that date/time.

Though for £100 the effort for the operator to chase this is probably not worth it - so if the "someone" was wanting to challenge the Cuban call - if they complained enough to the billing support they might drop the charge down to £10 as a "goodwill gesture". Though, the "someone" would only ever be able to get away with this once - as the "goodwill gesture" would be recorded against the mobile account for as long as the account exists.

shoi

AnotherJoe said:

Is that "someone", say, perhaps a husband claiming that the phone call to a hottie in Cuba was not them?

Just curious, really, honest

Grumpy_chap

So, the OP has twice stated that they are "just curious".

So, is this an entirely fictional scenario that has not happened to anyone ever, and for some random reason the OP was just curious about £100 calls to Cuba from a mobile.

How weird?

I have to say I am "just curious" to understand how anyone would come up with something so abstract.

badger09

Grumpy_chap said:

So, the OP has twice stated that they are "just curious".

So, is this an entirely fictional scenario that has not happened to anyone ever, and for some random reason the OP was just curious about £100 calls to Cuba from a mobile.

How weird?

I have to say I am "just curious" to understand how anyone would come up with something so abstract.

Boredom?