I’ve always thought of international calling as requiring a special prefix when dialing. I learned this morning that this is not always the case. In fact, there are many area codes that appear to be a US number and only require you to dial “1” first.
On February 1, Forbes (forbes.com) published an article by Joseph Steinberg citing the use of the 473 area code as one of the latest telephone scams. We’ve recently been receiving a number of calls that ring once, then disconnect. According to Steinberg, these “ring and run” scams are not new. In fact, they became popular back in the days when 900 numbers were introduced and everyone carried pagers.
Fast forward to today and scammers have learned they can have a robo-dialer call numbers, then immediately hang up. If the scammer has established the number as a premium service telephone number, he’ll get paid for every call made to the premium number. Do the math and it’s easy to see how you could generate some serious cash just by fooling people into dialing an unknown number for a missed call. Even if you dial the number, realize it’s a scam, then hang up immediately, you could be out one of those bills with Andrew Jackson’s face on it.
Here’s a list of the area codes cited in the Forbes article. You might want to memorize the list because there will be a test the next time your phone rings.
| 242- Bahamas | 441 – Bermuda | 784 – St. Vincent & Grenadines |
| 246 – Barbados | 473 – Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique | 809, 829, 849 – Dominican Republic |
| 264 – Anguilla | 649 – Turks and Caicos | 868 – Trinidad and Tobago |
| 268 – Antigua | 664 – Montserrat | 876 – Jamaica |
| 284 – British Virgin Islands | 758 – St Lucia | 869 – St. Kitts & Nevis |
| 345 – Cayman Islands | 767 – Dominica |
Glad this was helpful, Cameron.
Yes just got a call from area code 473 called back and said it was a magicjack line
Thanks for the additional info, Misty! MagicJack is quite popular—I guess with scammers as well as students.
I found this in a blog about a man whom a Nigerian tried to scam:
In all of the cases, the callers were using “magicJack”, a telephone device made by a company with corporate headquarters in West Palm Beach, USA. The device can be plugged into overseas phones so calls can be made using a U.S. area code. It is intended to allow somebody abroad — such as an American student in Europe — to make calls to the U.S. at a local rate
Here’s another unknown: 736