Code call: scammers began to massively attack people through home phones
Scammers began to massively attack people through home landlines. This has become a trend in recent weeks, information security experts told Izvestia. A year ago, there were hundreds of thousands of such calls, and now the bill goes to millions, they note. Telecom operators are putting more and more barriers for criminals to communicate with mobile subscribers, so they are looking for new ways to "reach out" to victims, experts say. Landline phones are less protected from fraud than cellular phones, while their users are more trusting.
How scammers deceive home phone owners
A new trend in cybercrime over the past two weeks has been calls from scammers to victims' home landlines, Igor Bederov, founder of the Internet Search company, NTI SafeNet market expert and director of the T.Hunter investigation Department, told Izvestia. According to him, in the last week alone, the number of calls, which had previously remained generally constant, increased by 20%. The main victims are elderly people who use the Internet and bank cards less often, but trust calls to their home phone, he added.
Nowadays, as a rule, people do not leave home phone numbers for contact. They believe that only official organizations can know them: the police, social security services and others, this increases the degree of trust in callers, the expert points out. At the same time, stationary devices are devoid of spam filters, unlike smartphones, and not everyone has a caller ID, he explained.
About 20 million fraudulent calls are made in Russia every day. And if in 2024 the number of such calls to city numbers was tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, now we can talk about about 3-3.5 million calls per day, Igor Bederov estimated.
The number of such attacks is likely to grow in the near future, added the head of the awareness-raising department (Rostelecom Information Security Unit). Marina Koprusova. According to her, the trend has been noted throughout the country — attackers act in an organized manner and cases of telephone fraud from landline numbers are recorded in different regions. The latest data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and relevant experts indicate a noticeable increase in cases of fraudulent calls to landlines, she claims.
— The main reason is that some categories of subscribers, especially the elderly, are less vigilant. Pensioners still actively use home phones and tend to trust calls from people posing as employees of official organizations," says Marina Koprusova.
Despite the development of mobile communications, millions of landlines are still serviced in Russia, market participants say. Rostelecom is the largest landline telephony operator. According to the company, in the first quarter of 2025, it served 8.8 million landline subscribers.
One of the fraud schemes with landlines looks like this: an attacker calls from a landline phone disguised as a Rostelecom employee, informs them of the termination of the contract and asks them to send an SMS code to the victim's mobile phone. After receiving the code, the fraudster gets access to the subscriber's personal accounts, and then the criminals call back "on behalf of the police or Rosfinmonitoring," intimidate the person and demand to transfer money "for verification," said Marina Koprusova.
One of the most popular schemes in early 2025 was the offer of "participation in investment projects" with the promise of income, Rostelecom reported. Fraudsters are calling landline subscribers, offering to invest in a fake project, and thus extort money.
Criminals may also pose as utility operators. For example, they allegedly call "from the energy company", warn about the obligation to urgently pay the bill for gas or electricity: they often ask the subscriber to urgently dictate information — SMS code, card details and others.
The Ministry of Finance believes that the problem of fraud through landlines is not widespread. Fraudsters may switch to this communication channel as the protection of calls to mobile phones increases, they believe.
— When talking on a landline phone, you need to hang up to perform the actions that the scammers are asking for. This creates a natural "cooling—off period" that allows the subscriber to assess the situation, the agency recommended.
The Ministry of Finance also noted that they are ready to promptly develop and implement additional protective measures for landline communications.
How to protect a landline number from fraudsters
Fraudsters' interest in city numbers is growing as operators and the government place new technological and administrative barriers in front of them to access mobile phones, market participants say.
— Mobile operators are actively working to combat fraudsters. For example, Vimpelcom has the My Security service, in which the operator not only warns about unwanted calls, but can even interrupt the conversation if at that time the subscriber received an SMS from Gosuslug. And also to compensate for losses if the subscriber still became a victim of illegal actions," says Ilya Nestor, director of the Department for Traffic Management and development of additional services at Vimpelcom.
But it is more difficult to protect a home landline number from fraudsters than a mobile one, information security experts admit. A landline phone is indeed a more vulnerable platform for fraudsters than a mobile device, since it is impossible to install third—party applications on it, agrees Anton Averyanov, CEO of the ST IT group of companies, TechNet NTI market expert.
— Now a lot of operators support the security feature by default. When a call is made from a fraudulent number, the call is interrupted. But at the same time, operators do not have all the functions to track such actions, so people often install third-party applications in order to protect themselves from fraudsters or detect spam calls. On landlines, however, due to the format of the execution, as a rule, such functionality is missing, " he told Izvestia.
There are practically no specialized technical means of blocking spam calls to landlines: telecom operators are focused on the mobile segment, says Marina Koprusova. Increased vigilance is recommended for landline subscribers.
— The contract for the provision of home telephony services is indefinite and does not require renewal. You don't need to tell anyone your passport data, SNILS, bank numbers, and SMS codes," she said.
Thus, the only "protection system" is the attentiveness of subscribers and the refusal to respond to suspicious requests, as well as awareness through official channels about the current tricks of scammers, Marina Koprusova believes.
Connected number identifiers for landlines help in the fight against fraud, said Roman Reznikov, an analyst at the Positive Technologies research group.
— A reasonable and simple protection measure would be to write out all verified numbers that regularly receive calls to a landline phone, such as contacts of relatives and friends. When you receive a call, you should check the incoming call number with known contacts and not trust any unfamiliar number," he said.
According to him, the telephone should be able to provide the number before picking up the handset.
The best defense against all social engineering attacks, including landline phone fraud, remains vigilance, Roman Reznikov agrees. Any information should be double-checked: independently call back to banks and city services, immediately contact relatives if even the most terrible news is reported about them, he recommends.
It is especially important to tell the elderly and children that both a call from an alleged representative of law enforcement agencies and a call speaking in the voice of a relative or friend may turn out to be a sophisticated fraudulent scheme, the expert concluded.
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