Don't Answer Your Phone If You Get A Call From This Texas Area Code

Over 60 million Americans reported phone call scams in 2021. A new report from GoBanking is urging you to avoid picking up the phone if you get a call from specific area codes to avoid these common phone call scams.

Among the most common phone scams are one-ring scams, traffic pumping scams and package delivery scams. While the two latter scams use international area codes disguised as U.S. ones, the former could contact you using an area code from right here in the States.

What's a one-ring scam? A scam number will call you and then hang up after just one ring. That'll prompt the victim to call back to see who might have called, which in turn will result in a connectivity fee and even per-minute fees for these "premium services" that'll pop up on your phone bill. The FCC says these calls could be connected to somewhere outside of the U.S., despite having a three-digit area code that represents an American phone number.

The FCC is urging Americans to avoid picking up the phone if it's a number or area code you don't recognize to avoid falling victim to a scam. To make things easier, scammers typically use the same area codes so you know which ones to avoid. Here's a list of common area codes used by scammers:

• 469: Dallas, Texas
• 216: Cleveland, Ohio
• 332: New York, New York
• 347: New York, New York
• 646: Manhattan, New York
• 657: La Palma, California
• 712: Western Iowa
• 218: Northern Minnesota
• 232: Sierra Leone
• 286: Antigua and Barbuda
• 284: British Virgin Islands
• 473: Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique
• 649: Turks and Caicos
• 664: Montserrat
• 767: Commonwealth of Dominica
• 809: Dominican Republic
• 829: Dominican Republic
• 849: Dominican Republic
• 876: Jamaica

Read the full report.