The number of telephone scams in which callers try to defraud people of money, averages 10,000 per day in Taiwan, a major telecommunications operator estimated Saturday.
TaiwanMobile said it has spent more than NT$10 million (S$443,000) on developing interception measures in a bid to protect the interests of subscribers and cut the harassment by fraudsters to a minimum.
Just one month after adopting measures to intercept scam calls, Taiwan Mobile reported that it had blocked 77,000 such calls.
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The company found that the number of calls blocked during weekdays accounts for 90 percent of the week's total, with calls peaking on Wednesdays.
The major time period of scam calls was between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., with the number of calls blocked during the period accounting for 87 percent of the day.
The number of calls blocked was the highest at 9 a.m., showing that the scamsters use a time when people are going to work or schools, and when public offices open, to confuse the receiver into thinking that the calls are real.
The criminals often use fake telephone numbers of government agencies so that people receiving the calls think that they have received calls from police stations or prosecutors office.
Police station numbers are most often used by the fraud rings in Taiwan, with the number of intercepted calls supposedly from such facilities reaching as high as 6,000 per month. In terms of localities, people in Taipei County, Taipei City and Taoyuan County received the most phone scam calls.
http://www.asiaone.com/Digital/News/Story/A1Story20100208-197324.html
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