A way of cheating GSM users has been reported in Finland lately:

Let's introduce two persons who don't know each other: "a victim" and " a cheater"

- Cheater approaches victim and asks to loan his/her phone to make a very important call. One short call only. A generous compensation (money) is offered.
- Cheater gets the phone, turns around, makes a call and puts the call on hold. He quickly makes a second call and then uses explicit call transfer to connect the two remote parties and disconnect himself.
- Victim gets the phone back but has no way of knowing that a transferred call was left active on his/her bill. Worst case has been something like a 14 hour call to other side of the globe...

Of course the only trick here is that not all people are aware of this GSM call service. And it is considered basic service by Finnish operators, so everyone has it.

Has anyone heard of this before? I'm assuming it's an old trick. If not, it may serve as a warning to people that might be affected. I know most of us would not loan our phones to strangers in any case (common sense).

Last I knew, in the UK, any Pay As You Go phones usually don't have access to this feature. Also some contracts need to ask to have it enabled, I think only Orange and Vodafone had it enabled as standard in the UK.

That's a more sensible way in the UK, then. I can think of this being used in businesses... a way of redirecting a customer to another employee who can answer the customer's questions.

That's a more sensible way in the UK, then. I can think of this being used in businesses... a way of redirecting a customer to another employee who can answer the customer's questions.

Hi Everybody,

I wish I could make use of such a service on the Orange network in the Netherlands for bussines purose, but it seems not to work. Anybody knows something more about how to activete this serive.

Tnx a lot,
Greeting from Holland
Artur