Premium or special numbers starting with 08 have increased in recent years. Unfortunately the latter benefit from special pricing and are rarely deducted from mobile plans. Yet there are tricks to bypass them and prevent your smartphone from dialing them..
Special numbers and telephone bill
Banks, insurance companies, public transport services, administrations, travel agencies and even telephone operators are crazy about premium rate numbers. It is practically impossible today to contact the customer service of one of these companies without using a premium rate number.
Problem communications made to these platforms are subject to special pricing which is not always very clear. Tariff on call for some, tariff on duration for others it's very simple, we don't understand anything..
Even numbers billed at the cost of a local call can sometimes hold unpleasant surprises. Indeed, some of these communications are not deducted from your voice credit but billed as an off-plan .
Consumers themselves are more and more hesitant to use these telephone services and prefer to move towards less expensive solutions such as e-mail or social networks..
List of premium rate numbers
It is still necessary to know how to identify them. Between the 10-digit numbers starting with 08 and the short numbers, the Azur , Indigo and other Audiotel numbers , we quickly got lost.
Few people know this and yet you can very easily block calls to special numbers with an application like Stop Surcharged Numbers. The filtering system is based on the list of premium rate numbers provided by the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications and Posts (ARCEP).
So when making a call, the application checks that the number is not on the list and if necessary blocks the communication. You will therefore not be billed.
Premium rate scams
This system is particularly effective against malware that uses your phone to automatically make phone calls to special numbers. Not to mention the ping calls scams .
You have certainly already received them. The technique consists of making a phone call with a single ring so as not to give the correspondent time to answer. The latter will then be tempted to call back. 
Except that the number making the call is not a classic number but a special rate number. The amounts thus withdrawn by this method can be in the region of tens of euros.
Block a premium rate call
We will now see how to protect yourself from all these scams by installing the Stop Surcharged Numbers application. Once installed, it will automatically block all calls to special numbers.
- Start by downloading Stop Surcharged Numbers on your Android smartphone
- Launch the application
- Click on the On button on the home page to activate the filtering system
- In the settings you can also block calls to foreign countries
- Then click on the exception section to add the special numbers that you do not want to block (customer service from your bank, your ISP, etc.)
Now when your smartphone tries to make a call to a premium rate number , the application will block it. A vibration will alert you that the system has detected an unauthorized call. 
You will find the entire list of refused calls in the history section as well as their rates. No more unpleasant surprises on your telephone bill.
