Scam calls from UK number

Just had third call this week from those nice Indian gents who want to repair my computer. The caller display first showed INTERNATIONAL, then changed to 01642878714, the area code for Middlesborough. Google this and there are many complaints of nuisance calls from this number. Are the scammers spoofing the UK number? One poster rang it back and says it was unobtainable.

Not much point in reporting these international calls, we are registered with TPS but they can deal only with UK.

PC hacking scam. http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/01642878714

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

Not much point in reporting these international calls, we are registered with TPS but they can deal only with UK.

TPS will deal with international #s used by UK firms but with these type of calls it's impossible to discover who's really calling.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

TPS will deal with international #s used by UK firms but with these type of calls it's impossible to discover who's really calling.

The law behind the TPS has no relevance outside the European Economic Area, though without reading through the detailed provisions I can't remember whether it covers non-EEA numbers under the control of an EEA entity.

The original poster's scenario is the not that uncommon scenario of foreign caller ID being deliberately concocted to look like a UK number. This fools many people into thinking it is the UK number in question. I'm fairly certain that INTERNATIONAL means that the call definitely originated from outwith the UK telephone networks.

Why do you keep disparaging my statements w/out even bothering to check the TPS rules?

In reference to www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/contactfaq.php:

Does registration with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) stop calls from overseas?

Companies based abroad who call into the UK and who are making calls on behalf of UK based companies, must comply with UK regulations and screen their call lists against the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) before making an unsolicited sales and marketing call to a UK telephone number.

You'd be more comprehensible writing English rather than the legalese you keep using.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Why do you keep disparaging my statements w/out even bothering to check the TPS rules?

What is on the TPS web site is a non-technical guide to the TPS scheme and the underlying legislation. It is not a definitive statement of the law.

The law is what is stated in the legislation, as interpreted by the European and domestic courts - not the guidance produced for that legislation even if that guidance comes form an official source. You cannot discern the boundaries of what is and isn't permissible based on guidance. If you are familiar with the layout of UK legislation, you will know that there is an explanatory note attached giving the key points of the legislation. Even this explanatory material is not part of the law, so cannot give rise to any legal right or obligation.


You repeatedly make very definite statements about what the law says based on sources that are merely guidance. It is rare for the law itself to be so clear cut - in most cases, a more correct answer is "it depends".


In this case, what the law says can be found in Regulation 21 of The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (SI 2003/2426) ('PECR 2003'). If you read reg. 21(1), you will see that the requirement to screen against the reg. 26 register (the Telephone Preference Scheme register) applies both to the person placing the calls ('A person shall neither use...') and, if they are different, the person on whose behalf the calls are being made ('A person shall ... [not] instigate the use of...').

However, UK legislation is limited in what it can do in relation to extraterritorial acts. A 'person' (which, in this context, can be an incorporated body with legal personality such as a limited company), who is outside the UK and is not British cannot be pursued under PECR 2003.

This means that the non-technical summary you quote is slightly misleading. A UK based company on whose behalf marketing calls are being made from abroad that has a responsibility to ensure that calls are not made to people who have opted out - though the UK company can choose whether to do this filtering themselves or engage someone else to do the filtering on their behalf. There is little UK law can do to a foreign company placing marketing calls from abroad into the UK on behalf of a UK company, as arguably the acts of that foreign company do not come under UK jurisdiction.

In some cases, calls are placed from foreign call centres that are evasive as to the identity of the UK party on whose behalf the calls are made. Of course, if the identity of the party causing the calls to be made is discovered, action can be taken against them.


I do not propose to explore the additional complexity that results from PECR 2003 being the transposition of an EU Directive into national law, except to note that other EU countries will have similar legislation transposing Article 13(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC. Such an exploration would necessarily involve discussion of direct effect and indirect effect of EU law.


N.B. This is written without checking whether there are relevant amendments to the law and and without researching relevant case law. I'm not trying to produce a legally watertight discussion here, merely to illustrate that making a definite statement based solely on official guidance can be misleading.

Well, it (official non-technical guidance) is good enough for the rest of us who can't be bothered to trawl and disentangle the arcane legalese of Acts of Parliament.

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

Not much point in reporting these international calls, we are registered with TPS but they can deal only with UK.

The other problem is that TPS only deal with sales and marketing calls.

I found that TPS would not accept a complaint about a market research call.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Well, it (official non-technical guidance) is good enough for the rest of us who can't be bothered to trawl and disentangle the arcane legalese of Acts of Parliament.

That ignores the point I was trying to make to you:

In reply to a post by David_W:

You cannot discern the boundaries of what is and isn't permissible based on guidance.

As I said earlier:

In reply to a post by David_W:

You repeatedly make very definite statements about what the law says based on sources that are merely guidance. It is rare for the law itself to be so clear cut - in most cases, a more correct answer is "it depends".

Law doesn't work in isolation. You can't just find what you believe to be the correct piece of legislation and apply that legislation to the facts of the case without considering the surrounding legal context. Relevant considerations are:

• how have the courts interpreted the law in this area, and is that interpretation a binding precedent?
• what broader issues of law are engaged by the situation?

In this case, the broader issues of law that come to mind are:

• what is the effect of the calling party being overseas?
• what is the effect of the relevant legislation being the domestic transposition of an EU Directive?

Before I started my formal legal education, I used to think that most legal problems could be solved by finding and applying the correct legislation. The reality is that it is far from that simple. Many areas of law have few legislative provisions, and are mostly defined by the case law - notably for these forums, this includes contract law. A bigger problem still is that there is rarely a single obviously correct answer. It is important to consider and evaluate all the possible alternatives.


In other words, I'm encouraged that you are thinking about the law and what it says. All I am suggesting is that it is in everyone's interests to acknowledge when you are working from guidance rather than legislation, also to recognise that it is rarely possible to give a definite answer to a legal problem. As one of my law tutors repeatedly said, there would be no need for the courts if all legal problems had a self-evidently correct answer.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I found that TPS would not accept a complaint about a market research call.

The legislation behind the TPS (Regulation 21 of The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (SI 2003/2426)) only applies to "unsolicited calls for direct marketing purposes". Market research calls are therefore not covered by the TPS unless there is a direct marketing element to the call alongside the market research element. There are organisations who try to dress up a marketing call as a sham survey, though I have no idea how common this is.