A call from an unknown number. On the answering machine, a man the recipient does not recognize says her surname and "moshi moshi" — hello — then hangs up. Lawyer Dot Com News asked readers on LINE to describe their experiences, and received a large number of accounts of suspicious calls and unexplained emails. Some said they had become so wary of fake messages that they nearly missed a genuine one.
Member information for about 6.6 million people leaked from the car-sharing service Times Car, one of a series of data leaks from companies. Many people are unsure whether their personal information is being misused somewhere.
"He knew my surname"
A woman in her 40s in Fukuoka Prefecture received a call from an unfamiliar number beginning with 070. On the answering machine, a man she did not know said her surname, said "moshi moshi" and hung up.
“What bothered me especially was that a man I had never met knew my surname.”she said
She called the number back and could not get through. Others described similar calls. "Right after the car-share leak, I started getting calls from unknown numbers, and when I answered there was hold music playing. I want it to stop. It's scary. My driver's license leaked too, so I worry someone will take out credit in my name," one reader said.
A man in his 50s in Fukushima Prefecture, who said he was among those affected by the Times Car leak, reported frequent suspicious calls claiming to be from Japan Post and the My Number Card center, starting shortly before the leak was reported. He said he felt he had no choice but to post a warning on his own social media.
Shouting in Chinese, then a hang-up
A man in his 50s in Osaka Prefecture said that after he shopped on an overseas mail-order site, suspicious calls came repeatedly for a time. "I got a considerable number of calls where someone shouted at me in Chinese and then slammed the phone down," he said.
A woman in her 50s in Ibaraki Prefecture received a call around July this year from someone saying they were contacting victims of special fraud — scams that often target older people by phone. The caller told her her contact details had been found at a company that had gone bankrupt. She had never heard of the company.
“I didn't know what to do about it, so I just left it.”she said