The associate professor talked about ways to identify an unfamiliar number.

Modern technology allows you to find out who is calling your number even before you pick up the phone. Alexander Timofeev, Associate Professor of the Department of Informatics at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, told about this on February 10.

There may be different situations when a call is made from an unknown number. These may be expected calls from couriers, company operators, or work colleagues. However, unwanted calls are often received from scammers who disguise themselves as delivery services, banks and other organizations.

In order to avoid fraud, it is important to know how to check who is calling. First of all, you should do a search on your phone. This way you can find out if this number was in your contact records, SMS messages, or messenger chats.

"Many numbers are determined automatically. For example, when an unknown caller calls, the name of the organization will appear on the screen in small print," he said in an interview with the Prime agency.

If no information is available, you can search through search engines. The expert noted that companies often publish their numbers on websites, and this helps to quickly understand who is behind the call, or at least determine which operator or region the number belongs to.

If an Internet search did not yield results, it is possible that the caller is using privacy settings. In this case, the name may be hidden, or an alias may be displayed on the screen.

Another way, according to Timofeev, is to use a banking application. When you enter a phone number, but without making a transfer, you can see the full name of the account holder that is linked to this number.

There are also services from telecom operators with an anti-spam function that show who owns the number or warn that the number may be unreliable.

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Such scam schemes are gaining relevance in late winter and early spring.

Dmitry Moryakov, head of the Mail spam analysis group, warned on February 6 that fraudsters were increasingly using multi-stage schemes and attacking Russians using emails from government services. Thus, in the fourth quarter of 2025, the number of suppressed attacks increased by 35% compared to the same period of the previous year.

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