By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – The CRTC today approved Bell Canada’s March 24th application seeking to block fraudulent what are called Wangiri fraud calls on its networks, at least until June 1.
Wangiri calls work the following way: one gets a phone call, most often on a cell phone and it rings only once. Wangiri is Japanese for “one ring”. Then the victim is tempted to call back, thinking they missed a call. When it does, the “bad actor” will try to keep the victim on the phone for as long as possible and when the victim gets its telephone invoice, it will have incurred significant overseas long-distance charges, to say nothing of the fraud that may happen on the call. The telephone carrier will also incur interconnection charges.
With the decision, the company plans to start blocking such calls as soon as possible.
There is another application, also filed by Bell, on blocking fraud calls for which a decision has not yet been announced. This most recent one is narrower in scope because it only concerns the verified “one ring calls” that seek victims to call back the originating number.
“The main objective of the relief sought is to assist in reducing traffic on the telecommunications networks at times of unprecedented call volume. In light of the exceptional circumstances, and the limited scope and duration of Bell Canada et al.’s application, the Commission determines that it is in the public interest to deal with the application on an urgent, expedited basis,” reads the CRTC decision.
Bell has to file monthly reports providing the number of blocked calls, and data regarding each false positive, along with information on how this false positive was detected. “Bad actors make huge volumes of such calls in the hopes that a sufficient number of Canadian recipients will call them back. Because of the extraordinary strain being placed on our networks starting last week with the Covid-19 pandemic, we tracked the number of daily Wangiri fraud call incidents recorded on our network,” reads the March 24 application. Since the start of the pandemic to when the application was sent, Bell says the number of suspected Wangiri fraud calls came in at 6,013,894.
“We’ve very pleased the CRTC moved quickly to approve our application so we can help protect Canadians during the Covid-19 crisis by blocking these clearly fraudulent calls. We expect to begin blocking Wangiri calls by next week at the latest,” wrote a Bell spokesperson in an email to Cartt.ca.
