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Phone calls purporting to be from gendarmes that ask people to call a particular number are a scam, authorities have warned.

The gendarmerie du Nord issued the warning over so-called 'ping calls', which often messages intended to convince victims to call a premium-rate phone line based in Mali.

"If you receive a call on your fixed or mobile phone trying to sell your a particular product, or if you are asked to call back an unknown number, you are the victim of a ping call," warns the Northern Gendarmerie on its Facebook account.

"Never call back an unknown number," gendarmes said. They added that people can ask their phone-line operator to remove their number from the publicly available phone lists and at the same time register on bloctel here

If you receive an unsolicited message, you can also send an SMS with the one-word message "spamvocal" to 33700 or connect to the site