If you receive a phone call with the +30 Greek area code, be very careful: it could be yet another scam attempt. In fact, in recent weeks it seems that more and more people are receiving calls from numbers starting with the prefix +30. Those who answer these calls often hear a synthetic voice that presents itself as a telemarketing operator or a representative of a mysterious company, who tries to convince the person contacted that they can receive benefits of some kind.
As has already happened in the past with other telephone scams based on the use of foreign prefixes, such as French or Dutch, the user may be asked to provide personal information or to call back a specific number. If you were to agree to such requests, you risk encountering identity theft or some other online fraud. To protect yourself from these telephone scam attempts, we suggest that you do not answer calls starting with +30 or, should you need to answer (perhaps because you have relationships with people in Greece), that you pay close attention to the requests made to you by those on the other end of the phone.
How the phone scam with the +30 code in Greece works
Telephone scams that start from a foreign prefix, such as +30 in Greece, can function differently based on the purposes that the scammers want to achieve and, consequently, the behavior of the latter can be of various kinds.
In some cases, for example, criminals could make short rings, so that the user sees a missed call and, driven by curiosity, calls the number back. This technique, also known as “Wangiri” (from the Japanese “one ring and off we go“), pushes the person called to call the number back. For what purpose? Since the line is connected to paid services, a few seconds are enough to generate high costs on the bill or dry up the telephone credit.
Among the most successful variants are fake winnings: the user is informed that he has obtained a prize or a gift voucher, but to “collect” it he must pay a small commission or click on a link that leads to a malicious site. In other cases, the tactic is that of psychological fear: you receive a message or phone call pretending to come from official bodies – banks, post offices, telephone companies – with an urgent request to pay an invoice or release a package at customs. Urgency serves to reduce reflection time and push potential victims to act on impulse, without reflecting on what they are doing.
Another strategy is to offer supposedly advantageous job opportunities or investments, which however hide requests for money or the fraudulent collection of personal information. There is also no shortage of cases of romance scams, where the scammer establishes an emotional relationship online with his victim (a relationship that in some cases can last several weeks or months), and then asks for financial help for completely invented emergencies.
How to protect yourself from the +30 prefix telephone scam
You understand well, therefore, that behind a phone call coming from the +30 area code, various dangers can truly hide. What strategies can you adopt to defend yourself? First, don’t answer unknown numbers with international dialing codes (unless you’re actually expecting a call from Greece). If you receive a ring that stops immediately, do not call back: it is almost certainly a scam attempt using the “Wangiri” technique. If you receive messages on WhatsApp or other messaging platforms from numbers with a Greek prefix, do not open the links shared with you and do not provide personal information. Instead, block the contact immediately and use the “Report” function to alert the platform to the problem you have encountered. And to prevent scam calls, activate your smartphone’s anti-spam filters: they don’t work perfectly, but they help mitigate the problem at least a little.
