Abusive prank phone calls annoy residents in Bahrain

Manama : Local residents are receiving abusive and threatening prank calls from users of a prank-calling app, which uses the fictitious number 65009284, people who received such calls said complained yesterday.

Numerous anonymous calls disguised with voices of fictitious characters were reported in the Bahrain. The phenomenon began after a prank-calling smartphone application became popular. 

Fictitious characters called Tyrone - an African American, Abdu - an Egyptian and Buk Lau - a Chinese, are some of the fake characters used by the software. The app has Indian, American and a female character as well and it can be downloaded from the app store on Android as well as iOS. The pranks, often are threatening in nature, according to those who have received such calls. Residents have complained that the prankster even threatened to visit their homes insinuating an assault or challenge a physical confrontation.

The user of the app only needs to click a button to ‘send’ the prank. Once the prank is sent, a pre-recorded audio file starts playing. 

The recording is played in such a way that the person pranked will have the chance to respond to questions and comments made by the recording, leading the person to believe that it is an actual conversation. “I received a call from a Chinese person who was yelling at me claiming that I cut him off on the road. He claimed that I showed him an inappropriate hand gesture and accused me of being obscene. I kept asking who it is but he did not answer my question, instead, he kept yelling at me. He said he has my home address and at the end of the call, he threatened to visit my home to confront me. I did not visit the police station because I was not sure how serious the threat was so I just let it go but I was a little worried because my family lives with me. I later found out that it was a prank call,” said Ahmed.

“I received two calls like this. One said that he was a registered sex offender who said he moved into my neighbourhood and was instructed by his probation officer to tell his neighbours about my criminal past. He said he wanted to meet me and I disconnected the line. In another call, an African American called me accusing me of being racist, “ said Asif. 

A prankster, who did not disclose his name, said he sent an ‘intimidating’ prank to his friend, “The prank was a man who calls up my friend and accuses him of an obscene crime. My friend was stumped and did not say much during the prank. I later revealed to her that it was a prank,” he said. 

When tried to call 65009284, the automatic answering machine said: “All circuits are busy now”. According to the software Truecaller, 54 spam reports have been reported against it.