What to do with suspicious phone number?

Its a lazy Saturday morning and a call comes in. Looked at the phone and the number that is displayed is surely a land line phone number but its not familiar. There is a brief hesitation, its ringing and ringing. There are many news of International phone numbers being used for scams, and this is a local number. Without much further thought, the phone is answered.

A short chat and its confirmed the call is from telemarketing business. How did they get my number?

A short call to the telco and it looks like I have to pay to enable some sort of process to stop that particular call or I can use the mobile phone's blacklist feature to drop calls from that number. If its registered as a private phone number, nothing much can be done. On most Android mobile phone's its just a matter of selecting that number, long press till the menu is displayed to blacklist the number. Select it and your are done.

Is there something more that can be done? Considering crime index places Malaysia at position no.16 (Numbeo.com) compared to Indonesia at no.42 and Singapore at no.117, its good to be vigilant when possible. There are several websites that offer you free registration of suspicious phone numbers. It helps other people to quickly search and identify if its a scammer or telemarketer. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) website only provides info on reporting, nothing to help you identify any suspicious phone number. Most of the pages are static and for general reading.

Apart from the police and legal authorities, another site to report phone and internet related security issues, like scams, is MyCert. Not much info is provided to help at their blog site, just a place to lodge reports.

With lack of serious support for the public, some netizen and overseas organisations provide information of known or potential scammers online.

NCC (http://www.nccc.org.my/v2/)
CCID (http://www.ccid.my/)
FraudFyi Blogspot (http://fraudfyi.blogspot.my)
Scamlizt Blogspot (https://scamlizt.blogspot.my)
Trip Advisor (https://www.tripadvisor.com.my/ShowTopic-g293951-i7006-k5271830-Dream_life_travel_is_a_SCAM-Malaysia.html)
Antifraund forum (http://antifraudintl.org/ )
US Embassy (https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=21370)
Trading blog (http://www.fraudslist.com/)

In the future, when in Malaysia and you encounter a suspicious phone number, just head to any of these sites below and look it up. It could help avoid potential problems.

https://www.show-caller.com/my
https://whocallsme.com
https://www.ripandscam.com

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