Callback Scam

A callback scam begins with a missed call, voicemail, text, or email that urges the recipient to call a specific number urgently. The number may be a premium-rate line that charges the caller by the minute (generating revenue for the fraudster), or a regular-seeming number staffed by scammers who will impersonate a bank, government agency, or tech-support service and attempt to extract personal information or payments.

In the premium-rate variant, the victim is kept on hold with automated messages for as long as possible, accumulating large charges. In the social engineering variant, the fraudster may use the inbound call to build credibility — 'you called us, so this is legitimate' — making it harder for victims to recognise they are being manipulated, since they believe they initiated the contact.

Callback scams are closely related to wangiri (one-ring) scams, vishing, and callback phishing (where an email instructs recipients to call rather than click a link). Victims should always look up contact numbers independently from official websites rather than using numbers provided in unsolicited messages, and should check whether a number is a premium-rate line before calling.