Mobile phone spam from Madagascar
Posted on 23rd July 2008 in Telecom |
During the 2-day period of 16th - 17th July thousands of Estonian mobile clients received a call from a Madagascar number: +261229600191. Those who missed the call and called back at that number were charged 1,63 € per minute.
Elisa, the operator discovering the spam, advises to not to answer the calls from unknown foreign numbers or return any of such missed calls.
You are all welcome to report your experiences regarding it.
7 Responses
What this demonstrates is yet another privacy problem in the super e-state called Estonia where people are unwittingly exposing themselves to all sorts of digital nightmares in their rush to embrace the digital revolution. This calls for a program like obfuscatr for mobile phone numbers - perhaps mobilatr or some such. This episode also demonstrates the lemming like qualities E-stonians have. “Oooh golly, here is a weird number on my phone. It looks foreign and i don’t recognise it. Let me call it anyway.” You baltic buffoons should grow up.
Firstly, it has nothing to do with privacy issues. Just because O2 or T-mobile don’t think it is important to mention the mobile spam doesn’t mean it’s Estonia’s unique problem. The thing is, we deal with it, you guys live with it.
Secondly, Britons are probably the last ones in position to criticise privacy issues. In Estonia we don’t walk around the town with laptops full of sensitive data of general public. While your parliament is incapable of finding solutions regarding ID card implementation, we have made it happen a decade ago. So have Finns and Danes.
Wrong. Your flippin defence minister resigned cos he lost a laptop.
Wrong. I have not had a single spam call or text with o2, orange or T mobile over the 14 years i have had a mobile.
Wrong. Brits care about rights that is why we have not, like lemming estonians, rushed to get ID cards.
I have no idea what’s the incident you refer to. I think you are messing things up and missing the point. The thing is, even if any of our ministers even lost a laptop, quite frankly, it would cause no leak. That’s one of the main benefits of the whole identification project. Having someone’s laptop doesn’t get you identified. We don’t carry the databases along, we identify for the centralised one.
“Rushed to get ID cards“ - we are not rushing to get it, we have it in function. Anyone who has seen British parliament members taking up the identification subject must be well aware of the amount of populism in these statements. Nothing to do with privacy issues, just plain political gibberish for the unaware crowd.
If you mean the incident in 2004, in which Estonian defence minister quitted over the stolen state documents in his briefcase during the burglary, no laptop with any of state’s databases were stolen and leaked. So that’s a mislead.
And another bit of news of today: Stolen UK passports worth £2.5m. So few papers lost in a burglary does not make a comparison.
“Rushed to get ID cards.” I said rushed. Not rushing. Estonia had to withdraw the initial batch of id cards becuase the bloody puk and pin codes were visible if you held it up to the light.
Well that was the development matter and is not an issue for a long time now.
Whilst you are keeping calm and “not rushing” to get ID cards, this is what happens: ‘Fakeproof’ e-passport is cloned in minutes.