Data breach - spam Mandarin phone calls
 

Is anyone else who flew to China, HK or Taiwan up to 2018 getting numerous spam calls from fake UK mobile numbers with a recorded message in Mandarin about a package at the Chinese embassy?

I know several people who have been getting these, and while it might have initially appeared as a data breach from the visa section of the embassy, it seems British Airways might be a more likely source.

They're highly annoying because there's no way to block them as they use a different number each time. It would be handy to have a slice of the £20million fine to cover the costs of changing my number, but that's not going to happen. :rolleyes:

Fortunately I am not being bothered by these spam calls. During the course of regular HKG and TPE visits I was inadvertently exposed to three separate data breaches: BA, Cathay Pacific, and Starwood

I have received quite a few of these calls over the past month or so yes.
I was impacted by the BA data breach and I also have a 2018 Chinese Visa/trip.

My wife has been receiving these for the past 6+ months. We both travelled to China and HK in 2019 (not before). I have not received them however.

EDIT TO ADD: I thought it might be because she signed up to WeChat while we were there. Not sure if that's a common link?

As a general point, unless I know I’m expecting an unfamiliar call, everything else not in my contacts I send to Voicemail. 99% of the time no message is ever left by these pests. If it was someone who knew you, they’d leave a message. It’s the only way to remove this distraction at the moment, until OFCOM perhaps have a rethink on allowing callers to disguise their number. Removing that ability would prevent a lot of Spam and Fraudulent calls I think. It wouldn’t stop ‘unknown callers’ but they always use to get sent to voicemail before the rules allowing disguised numbers was brought in.

I'm getting these every few days. I guessed that they were because I've used DiDi in China, but hadn't made the connection that they might be linked to the BA data breach.

I travelled March 2019 to Shanghai (not with ba but with Hong Kong airlines, left with Korean air) and since last week also getting these calls. The automated message also enters the voicemail.

very annoying as they seem regular Uk mobile numbers so easily fooled.

I do have a ba account & we chat but not sure which data breach it’s from. Surely if it was BA we would’ve been receiving more calls so far?

what are they gaining from these calls? It’s in Chinese so can’t even understand what they are saying.

I don't believe there is any link to BA in this case. I've checked with a few friends (all with links back to China) who get these calls in mandarin that usually start off on the premise that there is a delivery or something to do with the Chinese Embassy. Several of them have never flown with BA, yet get the calls. There is a definite link back to a Chinese based data breach, but I personally have WeChat, Didi, travelled several times to China, have a Chinese bank account, have applied for Chinese Visas, and to date do not get these calls. I was also implicated in the BA data breach.

If you get a CMLink UK SIM card, and don't port a number from another network onto the SIM card, you can be guaranteed to get these spam phone calls.

Yes I get them - good for your Mandarin at least :)

I do get them and I have been to Asia during 2018 a few times but never with BA. I am sure it’s not BA related.

Everyone in Chinese speakers-rich US area codes has been getting these calls for years (well, they tapered off in 2020, but have since resurged). They then spread to less Chinese-y area codes. I guess they're spreading to other countries with considerable Chinese speakers. Nothing related to BA or any data leaks.

So have I. A mild mystery has been cleared up!

Not that it is any consolation, but my two NYC cell phones (I long ago left for Florida, but kept my NY numbers) receive dozens of Mandarin spam calls per year. Yes they both were in Hong Kong (and mainland China) albeit several years ago and via Cathay. The US carriers do a pretty poor job filtering out such crap, which has had the unanticipated side effect that almost nobody in the US answers their mobile phone nowadays, if the calling number is not already in contacts. Even businesses route inbound calls to voicemail. I will only answer an unknown call if it identifies from a few, known area codes where I have customers (like St. Louis and Connecticut).

For this reason alone, I would favor governments to institute a tiny tax for every outbound call regardless of source (VOIP, landline, individual cell)

The numbers that appear on your caller id are spoofed. Any random numbers can appear n the numbers that they called are random.

Basically it does not relate to BA n it is a scam.
Many Asia countries such as Singapore, HKG , malaysia also receive such calls.

There is some old lady in HK who was cheated of HKD 254 million recently
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...nned-out-hk250


https://www.straitstimes.com/singapo...han-69-million

For Singapore, they did introduce a smart way to identify these spoof call.
They ask the telcos to add a + sign to all overseas incoming call
so these spoof call will appear as +65xxxxxxxx.
If it is a local call, there won’t be any +65.

https://www.imda.gov.sg/-/media/Imda...alls.pdf?la=en

Wait until you live in Hong Kong - that's a whole new level of spam calls!

How do you know it was as a result of the BA breach directly ?

You’d be surprised how these people get your number. You can agree to a company is passing on or selling your number to other parties in the terms and conditions that we all read from beginning to end religiously before we put that tick in the box.

if yiu get ANY spam forward it to 7726 (SPAM) where your carrier will work with Ofcom to get this number closed down.

I have been receiving these calls, it gas been fun pranking the scammers when they answer...

Also get spam calls in what sounds like Mandarin but no obvious link to BA travel.

Scammers don't "get" numbers. They just call every single phone. I've had office people here in SoCal telling me that the Mandarin scanners call every one of their consecutive-numbered extensions sequentially.

Get these periodically, but haven't for a while. It's more of a scam than spam.. they usually pretend to be Fedex/UPS etc and say you've had your parcel (conveniently filled with stolen passports and credit cards) "seized" by customs at Shanghai Airport. If you engage/go with it they then pretend to transfer your call to the airport police and there the scam is progressed.

Scammers when they call people will usually just dial auto-generated numbers unless user data has been specifically hacked/stolen. There are some good videos on YouTube on how this is done. I recommend watching the Jim Browning ones they are excellent.

I doubt there is a BA connection. I get these calls occasionally in Canada and I have never been to China or HK, or have any connection to the Orient. I assume it's just autodialing numbers. I'm assuming they are Mandarin, it's a language I don't understand so not an effective spam call.

But would that have an effect? I've been getting spam emails for decades. The idea is that a computer of an innocent person is infected by a virus and then the virus starts spamming people on behalf of an unidentifiable evil guy who controls the virus. You could maybe bill the owner of the computer sending the spam messages (who is himself a victim of this), but this person is not the one behind the spam and billing this person won't stop the spam from being sent. I would have thought that spam phone calls are generated in the same way, by viruses installed on people's smartphones. These people probably even get billed the per-call or per-minute dialling cost for the calls by their carriers and so may have a chock the next time they get a phone bill.

It's probably illegal to spam people in all countries in the world, but no one is ever charged for this because the ones behind it can't be found. If you can't find the ones behind the problem, then introducing extra charges wouldn't help the problem at all since you won't know whom to charge.

And you're assuming the ne'er-do-wells that make these spam calls are law abiding individuals who pay their phone bills? This would have no impact on these scrotes.

That's not how it's done, at least not generally. These companies use machines to autodial numbers. There are a few cases in the UK where companies have received fines in the hundreds of thousands of pounds but it's obviously harder to get the scammers/phishers operating in different countries, although there have been some Indian call centres shut down. I sort of miss the calls I used to get that pretended to be from 'Windows' telling me my PC has an issue I was unaware of!

Will the Chinese government do anything to stop calls coming from there? I'm sure they could if they really wanted to...