Hi there,
I have a following dilemma: a family member was visiting us recently from abroad and since then his mobile phone has been targeted by somebody calling him up to 20 times a day from a number in Switzerland. The caller only speaks French and it has been impossible to find out who he is and what he wants. Our relatives says he did not give his number to anyone. How can I find out who he is? I have the number and it is a mobile number (079-prefix) but I do not want to call it and became his next target. Any ideas?

http://tel.search.ch
http://tel.ch

They should let you do reverse lookups. Whether the number's listed is another question..!

20 times a day is excessive. You can always blow a very loud whistle down the line to deter them. Is it an automated voice? I used to have a caller call everyday at 4.30am at work without fail, which didn't really bother me as I wasn't at work. Some telesales computers just dial up numbers over and over until someone picks up.

Next time it rings, hand the phone over to somebody who speaks French? Just a thought.

Go to a Swisscom shop, take along proof of ID of your number. They will block his number, as 20 times a day is commiting a nuisance, they can see from his bill that he has been persuing you.

just to clarify a few points....

the visitor came from abroad. The visitor should contact their service provider
079 is not guaranteed to be Swisscom. It started life as a Swisscom number, of course.....

Look on the bright side, it's costing the caller more than the receiver.

Thanks for your quick replies! I have already tried the websites for search but it seems the number is not listed on them. I think I will try the Swiss com shop next. How can I tell that this is a Swiss com number though, could it also be one of the other providers and if so would Swiss com be able to look it up?

Our relative has already contacted his provider but they have said that as the caller is not in their network they cannot do anything.

Our relative speaks several languages but not French and nor do any of his friends. The caller is only babbling on in French. The caller is a real person and not a recording. I initially thought that maybe our relative's number was somehow scanned via bluetooth while he was on the tram or something.

Thanks again for your input. I will check in tomorrow with Swiss com's comments.

Why don't you withhold your number while calling

Good idea. How exactly do you do this from Switzerland?

On my mobile phone I have an option that I can select from the menu under settings.

The best thing to do is report it to your Cousin's Network provider and put a block on that number.

As what Aleksandr says from comparethemeerkat.com "SIMPLES"

When he calls again, simply put the Phone aside and done hang up. He will run up a huge bill then

Doc.

Or answer and employ Universal Communication Code
as demonstrated below...

(NSFW, unless you work for BT)

no one can "scan" your phone number using Bluetooth.

You've been reading too much science fiction.

I m sure , u must be having some or other option of launching an official complaint against such a person for troubling anybody like this.

Try searching for the number in http://whocallsme.com/. This will let you know if it a common spam number. we were getting repeated calls from a number in 1st France, then Italy. This site informed me they were both common spam cold-callers. If you try phoning them back, you get nothing.

I had a very similar situation myself.
I called the number back at a coule of times at a weekend and got someone I could talk to; turns out an elderly and partly senile relative had been given a mobile phone so they could call for help if needed, and somehow had changed the only programmed number and couldnt understand why the phone did not ring her children when she used it.
Calls immediately stopped.
Sad instead of scary.

Or call him from a public phone...

..or post his number here so we can all give him a ring.

Thank you for input, everybody. I went to a Swisscom shop today and they said they could not do anything as it was against the law. They would not even check the number. The only option they gave me was to report the matter to the police who would then get Swisscom to hand over the phone records.

On the way home I decided to call the number from a phone box and it turned out that the gentleman in Lausanne thought he was calling his wife's brother. How he got the phone number of our family member is a mystery, as is why he continued to make calls when it was clear that he was calling a wrong person in a wrong country who couldn't speak his language! Sounds a bit odd to me but hopefully I managed to scare him off now.