I have several blog entries on phishing and scam phone calls. This entry is that your own phone number is being spoofed. You will get a call from your very own phone. That is, the caller ID says your phone number and the caller name is your name. Answer the call and it will hang up (phishing for active number) or there will be a scammer on the other end.
The actual phone call is from an entirely different number. It is the Caller ID that is being changed.
How do the spoofers do it? You can google "caller ID spoofing." There are a number of free programs that do this.
What do you do now? Used to be you could ignore any numbers that didn't provide a recognizable caller ID, but now the caller ID has been hijacked. What if you are in a business where potential customers might call from any number? How do you know if it is a customer or a spoofer? You don't. What if the spoofer is using your home phone number?
Clearly, the technology has lagged behind the ingenuity of the criminal mind. For now, we have to not answer any calls and await a phone message. Of course, I listen to the phone message, it is someone I know, so I call them back. Of course, since they are in the same boat I am, they won't answer the call back. So we don't communicate at all except through phone messages.
This is pretty bad and the phone companies should fix it using some sort of security mechanism that does not allow caller ID changes. I would go so far as to say that if the calls are coming from a foreign country and they don't fix the problem ASAP, all calls from that country should be blocked until they do.
Or I guess we go to texting. What is your experience and do you have a way around the problem?
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