Strange area code

083, 085, 086, 087 and 089 are all normal Irish mobile prefixes.

It’s still possible, using VoIP, to set your outgoing caller ID to literally anything. The phone network just presents whatever’s sent through. It doesn’t verify anything.

So basically these scammers use random, totally normal outgoing numbers.

I’ve had calls returned to me by people saying that I called them and I never did.

Also blocking calls / reporting them to spam database or publishing them online just hits some totally innocent third party.

The networks need to do some filtering at source.

There’s supposedly work going on at network level to prevent calls being dumped into the system as international calls displaying Irish numbers.

However, given that lots of people are still receiving them, I can only conclude it’s not complete.

ComReg has a task force, mostly made up of people from the various telcos, trying to find a coordinated solution to this.