CINAA TELECOMMUNICATIONS FRAUD PREVENTION - RETURNING TELEPHONE CALLS

Businesses in some overseas and Caribbean countries may receive payment from their telephone company for all incoming overseas calls received by their business. In this manner, their telephone company shares in profits resulting from incoming overseas traffic. This gives those businesses a large incentive to generate calls from Canada and other countries and they may go to extreme measures to do so. The measures used are fraudulent if they promise something they don't provide, or misquote the cost of the calls.

To entice you to place a call to one of these countries, you may receive an unsolicited message on your pager or answering machine to call an unfamiliar long distance number. They may leave a simple message and hope you will return the call, or further entice you by advising that you have won a prize, that they have valuable information for you, etc. You may instead read an ad to call one of their numbers in a magazine or newspaper. Sometimes the ads are for adult entertainment lines or chat lines. Again, these promotions are only fraudulent if they promise something they don't provide, or misquote the cost of placing these calls.

Sometimes, the destination number is concealed in an unfamiliar dialing pattern so as not to appear to be a long distance or overseas call. For example:

	Their message is lengthy but interesting enough to keep you from hanging up.
	Their message withholds important information until late in the call.
	Your call is put on hold.
	You appear to have called a very busy place where you are repeatedly delayed and put on hold while anxious voices are heard in the background.

	Before placing any call, know where you are calling to and whether the call will be billable to you. If calling to an overseas or Caribbean destination, rates to those destinations are considerably higher than rates for domestic calls.
	If you have a device which records the telephone numbers which have called you, does the number recorded by that device match the number left on your answering machine? There can be legitimate reasons for the numbers to be different, but be wary if returning a long distance call.
	If you receive a message to return a call for which you will be billed, assess whether the message seems to be legitimate before calling. Does it sound too good to be true? If you are asked to call to an unfamiliar area code or an overseas destination, question the legitimacy of the call.
	If you call anyway, then realize you shouldn't have, hang up immediately.