Lynn Says

More reports of local caller ID spoofing

 


Most of us use caller ID on our landline telephones or cell phones to screen telephone calls. I was at the newspaper office about 8 p.m. Sunday night and a call came in showing an 800 number as the source. I chose not to answer it because I almost never answer 800 number telephone ID calls.

800 numbers are usually an INBOUND service businesses provide so customers may contact them toll-free. The 800 number I saw was an OUTBOUND call from somewhere. I cannot think of a good reason any business will be calling me on Sunday night.

Also, there's a good chance that the 800 number was a spoof to make it look harmless.

I received a call from a local businessman tipping me off his business phone number was showing up on caller IDs and the call WASN'T from him. What is worse, the crook on the other end of the line was promising they would pay off all of the recipient's credit card debt if they would provide them with certain information.

Recently, I have seen the familiar ATT cell phone 748 prefix popping up on my caller ID and they are turning out to be spoofed numbers.

Normally, I feel pretty comfortable answering an unfamiliar 748 or 327 number. Most local people who have those prefixes are probably folks I want to talk to. So I am really irritated that the spoofing criminals are making their calls look local.

In case you're not familiar with the term “spoofing,” it is the act of altering the information forwarded to your caller ID in order to hide the true origin ID. (Email addresses are also spoofed, but that's another column.)

In researching this, I found out there are various legitimate reasons some people cause their real ID to be spoofed. Law enforcement officials and private investigators who are trying to find suspects, persons of interest or missing persons frequently use caller ID spoofing to locate these people.

Oftentimes, these people rely on the support of friends and family to stay hidden. Call spoofing can be used by professionals in order to appear as though are calling from family numbers or family friends. It is easy to ignore a call from an unknown caller ID, but anyone will answer a call from their mother or their best friend. When they answer those calls, separate services provide their location making the job of an investigator much easier.

Veterinarians, doctors and teachers also need to make night-time calls to their clients, but they don't want to give away their personal phone number. They can sign up for call spoofing to protect their privacy.

The new trend of using a VoIP telephone service instead of traditional landlines makes caller ID spoofing much easier. Apparently, some of the services make it easy for you to enter what you want the caller ID message to look like.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is the technology of using your internet connection service to handle your voice telephone service. There are a lot of advantages but the huge disadvantage is if your internet goes down, so does your telephone service. It's pretty nice to have both services for back-up reasons.

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 

Our Family of Publications Includes:

Arc
Newsgram

Powered by ROAR Online Publication Software from Lions Light Corporation
© Copyright 2024