Spurious calls to mobile from abroad

[#1]

Over the last year or two I've had the odd call to my mobile number from abroad from mobile numbers. At the start I answered them and it was always the same. The caller was calling me as I had called them immediately previously and hung up before it was answered. Needless to say I'd never made the call. I stopped answering them and blocked the numbers since I can't think of anyone abroad who'd be calling me.

I never thought to do anything about it but it has become more frequent - now averaging about one per  week over the last month or so. They come from different countries the last 4 have been from Denmark, Spain, France and Italy - all in the last month.

Reason I want to do something about it now is that today's call from Denmark was an irate woman who claimed I'd called her minutes before. I explained that I didn't and couldn't as I was driving and the only reason I'd answered was I didn't look at the number. She was really quite rude and insistent I'd made a call to her minutes before and would not accept that I hadn't. I've checked both my phone and my online call logs and there are no calls logged. Any idea what's going on?

[#2]

@jamieallan 

What’s going on is that a spammer is spoofing your phone number to send these calls.

You are unlucky and there’s not much that you can do about it except change your number.

[#3]

Yes I thought that would be the case - but I still can't understand how in every event the person who called me had had an unanswered call that they were calling back about. I'd have expected calls from people who'd answered the spoofed call and were irate that the call had been made.