COVID Vaccine Call Scam: Does Pressing Numbers During IVR Calls Put Your Phone At Risk? Here’s What We Found

Amid the recent surge of COVID-19 cases across the country, a video showing an elderly man warning against a ‘COVID vaccine call scam’ has gone viral on social media platforms. 

In the two-minute-eight-second-clip the man is heard saying, “…hackers will call you, and say ‘We are conducting a survey for the Health Department. Did you take COVID vaccine or not? If you took the vaccine, please press 1. And if not, please press 2.’ You will receive such a call, and if you press 1 or 2, immediately your phone will be hacked, your bank account details will be hacked…”  

The post can be seen here.

Newschecker received the video multiple times on our  WhatsApp tipline (+91-9999499044) requesting to be fact checked.

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Fact Check/Verification

We found that the video is not recent, and has been in circulation since at least May 2024. Further, the man seen in the clip claims that he saw this information on a Marathi news channel. Notably, a report by News18 Lokmat from May 4, 2024 made the same claim. 

But can scammers get control of the phone if you click a specific button? 

Newschecker reached out to Karan Saini, a cybersecurity researcher, to find out whether a phone can be hacked by simply clicking numbers during a call, as claimed in the viral clip. Saini dismissed the same, saying, “There are no attacks that can be performed like this.” 

“While it isn’t impossible —  assuming that a call-layer based vulnerability exists, it isn’t clear why a button press would be required to exploit the victim’s device. By that I mean a vulnerability in telecommunication networks and/or protocols that can be exploited over a phone call,” he told us. 

“Those could exist in theory, but even then, such a vulnerability would need to be coupled with vulnerabilities affecting the OS of the phones being targeted. Further, to exploit this at a scale which would make this a common scam would be both impractical, and improbable, and unimaginably expensive,” Saini added. 

“It’s (instructing potential victims to click on numbers) a trust verification exercise to assess the impact of impersonation and staging ground to carry out a scam,” cybersecurity expert Jiten Jain told Newschecker. 

An article published on the official website of computer and network security enterprise Avast in January 2025, noted, “At present, it’s impossible to get hacked by simply answering a phone call made through your network service provider. But phone calls can still be exploited to compromise your security via a social engineering attack, or by listening to and recording your voice.”

Social engineering is a manipulation technique wherein the scammers try to lure unsuspecting users into exposing data, spreading malware infections, or giving access to restricted systems. Such scams are built around how people think and act. Once an attacker understands what motivates a user’s actions, they can deceive and manipulate the user effectively, according to Kaspersky, another firm dealing in computer and network Security.

Impersonation: A common modus operandi

Multiple ‘vishing’, voice phishing, scams wherein scammers pretend to be calling from a trusted source, like a reputable company or a government agency, and trick victims into revealing sensitive information have been reported in the recent years. In such cases, as well, victims did not lose money by merely pressing a number of their phones. Instead, on pressing the instructed number, the call was “directed” to a cyber criminal pretending to be a government/company official who lured the victims into disclosing personal details, such as bank account numbers, Aadhar card information or OTPs etc., and then duped them. 

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One such widely reported digital fraud is the “Telecom department scam,” wherein victims received a call claiming to be from the Telecom Authority of India, informing that their phone number was “involved in illegal/fraudulent activities and would be blocked.” The victims were directed to “press 9” to connect with an “official” for more information. The scamster posing as the “official” would then extract valuable details from the victim to swindle money. 

Not the first time

A similar WhatsApp forward alleging that answering a call from a specific number can get the phone hacked went viral in 2021. “Just now one of our friends received a call from 912250041117 asking him to press 1 if I had been vaccinated. He pressed 1 and immediately the number turned red and his phone had been hacked. So be careful when you get similar calls,” the message claimed. 

The message was termed as a “Hoax” by the Delhi Police. “No such number exists. Don’t get panicked by such fake news,” Delhi Police’ Cyber Crime & IFSO unit clarified in an X post in May 2021. 

The Telangana Police had also called out the same. “We checked the number and found that it did not exist. So there is no need to panic on getting the message. So far no person has received any call from the number,” a Telangana Today report from April 2021 quoted KVM Prasad, ACP (Cybercrime), Hyderabad as saying. 

Also Read: Did PM Modi Unveil New Financial Project After Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Rebuke’? No, Viral Video Is Deepfake

Conclusion

Hence, we find that the viral video claiming that fraudsters will hack your phone if you press the instructed button during a scam call is misleading. 

Sources
Conversation With Cybersecurity Researcher Karan Saini On June 5, 2025
Conversation With Cybersecurity Expert Jiten Jain On June 5, 2025
Article Featured In Website Of Avast, Dated January 17, 2025
Official Website Of Kaspersky
X Post By @DCP_IFSO, Dated May 20, 2021
Report By Telangana Today, Dated April 26, 2021