Apparently I'm not the only one and it was not just a regular, innocent missed call. 

According to kompas.com, several people had reported a similar incident in the past few days. Some even received such missed calls more than one time and from different country codes.

This missed call issue is said to be a premium call-based scam that has been deceiving quite a few victims in many countries, including Australia and New Zealand. 

Read also: Fake tickets sold to dozens of Indonesian pilgrims

Back in February, Australians had reported strange international calls from countries such as the Republic of the Congo, Papua New Guinea and Belgium. Also in early February, people in New Zealand also reported receiving missed calls from abroad, sometimes even more than twice a day in a short period of time.

Kompas.com reported that such a scam had actually been around since the early 2000s. Popularly known as wangiri, which means "missed call" in Japanese, it is said to have originated from Japan following a huge missed call scam in 2002 that resulted in a chaotic situation for the country's celullar operators.

Wangiri is reportedly a scam that randomly targets mobile phone users. The culprits make thousands of random phone calls to phone numbers around the globe by only ringing them once, resulting in a missed call. They will then simply wait for potential victims who are curious enough to call them back. Those who did so would automatically be rerouted to a premium rate number overseas, leaving the victims with a hefty phone bill. 

In short, curiosity is usually good, but in this case is better avoided at all costs. (kes)

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