Phantom Telephone Call

[bad company]

I was just listening to BBC Radio 4. They were talking to a guy who was charged nearly £500 for a call from his mobile to a number in Tunisia. He’s adamant that he never phoned the number and that his phone was with him at the time of the alleged call. The phone company EE won’t back down and are insisting that he pays for the call.

Is there a way his phone could have been hijacked or cloned?

[EU_Foreigner]

If the phone is compromised, then routing a call via the phone is possible.

This can also include a routing via your Bluetooth connection if you are near enough to the phone.

[bad company]

EU_Foreigner said:

If the phone is compromised, then routing a call via the phone is possible.

This can also include a routing via your Bluetooth connection if you are near enough to the phone.

Can you explain how this happens please. They had an expert on the radio but didn’t give her enough time to explain how a ‘phantom call’ could be made and what can be done to protect yourself from such an event.

[anonymous-user]

Presumably the usual safeguards; particularly keep your Bluetooth switched off if you don't actively need it. A lot of folk leave everything switched on all the time, as indeed we are generally encouraged to do. That's fine until some f*cker hacks your phone and calls the other side of the planet!

[rampageturke]

The telephone system (including SMS) is horribly insecure and mobile isn't any different.

These systems will never be up to 21st century standards of security without massive investment, and private companies have no desire to be the ones to do it.

Or, and this is probably pretty likely, he's either lying or cant remember, and he did actually unwillingly make a call that charged an absurd rate.

[anonymous-user]

Presumably, if you set up things such as spend caps and international call bars as part of your contract, then anyone successfully hacking into your phone would still be unable to get past these?

[NikBartlett]

Possible with an app unwittingly downloaded to the phone. The phone call logs would show the call and when it was made although this might not be the case if made from a rogue app.

[bad company]

My plan with 3 includes unlimited calls, texts & data. I just set a monthly spend limit of £30 on the app which should prevent major fraudulent use.

[quinny100]

Most likely cause will be an app downloaded to the phone and granted Phone permissions - this allows the app to make and receive calls.

If I was a betting man I’d have a pound on a free football streaming app - I’ve seen several of these with dodgy extras added.

[Bacon Is Proof]

Not a mobile but I remember years ago my parents having a number of high cost phone calls to a South American adult chat line appear on their bill.
BT were adamant that the calls were genuine and I initially suspected my brother but then subsequent calls were made when the house was empty.
Turned out to be a naughty engineer who was eventually caught out and prosecuted but it was a hell of a struggle to get BT to even consider the possibility that the calls were fraudulent.