Like most people, I receive numerous calls on my cell phone from both personal and business contacts (because I don’t want to have two phones). And since I work for a big company here in San Diego, any 858, 619, or 760 area code will always be answered as being ‘legitimate’. Whenever I get a robocall, I naturally block the number on my iPhone since I know spammers use the same numbers. However, I get at least 2-3 of these a week, and increasingly they come from spoofed numbers with an 858, 619, or 760 area code, making me reluctant to block them in case they correspond to real people that may need to reach me. So far, I am still blocking them, but I’m a bit concerned that since all the FTC Do Not Call stuff has amounted to zero, and the robocallers seems to be getting better at what they do, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out what is the best number to spoof you with and start hitting on all the right prefixes for your area to get you to answer. So my question is: if a robocaller uses the number 619-555-5555 and that is the actual number of my boss, if I block the spoofed number, am I correct in saying I would forever be blocking my boss too?
Yes.
Yes, if your blocker only looks at the number. Mine also looks at the caller ID, so if it is from CARD SERVICES, I can block it no matter what number they call from. Of course, either way is whack-a-mole, because they can spoofe the CID as easily as they spoofe numbers. Telephones are about as useless as email at this point.
That will have limited utility now. CARD SERVICES, if you are referring to the “lower your interest rates” scam from “Carmen” or “Rachel”, has morphed into more imaginative numbers and descriptions. I get these calls several times weekly, and they no longer repeat the numbers or descriptions for more than a few days.
One of the more clever and disarming techniques is for the scammers to generate a fake number that is only a few digits away from your own, making it look local. Then they look up the actual owner of that number in a database and use the real name for the CID description. In my small town, it’s possible that I even know the party who is (supposedly) calling, so I am encouraged to answer. I have a log of these, and they are quite common.
Got a call from Card Services yesterday. Same area code and prefix as ours. Obviously spoofed. Happening more and more. All the spam calls on my Google Voice number are from its area code and prefix.
We’ll probably let the ones to our main number go to the answer machine if they’re from same area code/prefix from now on.
Services like NoMoRobo are a huge threat to these jerks. And since caller ID can be trivially faked, I’m surprised this wasn’t the norm a couple years ago.
I moved across the country a couple years ago. My wife and I kept our cellphone numbers from the old locale.
Several times a week we get calls apparently from the same first 6 digits (NPA-NXX for cognoscenti) as our mobiles have. And which numbers don’t correspond to any of our actual old-area contacts. They’re 100% card services or some other spammer.
Since we’re not generating any new friends or business contacts in the old location we’re happy to ignore them.
Bottom line: anecdata clearly shows the bad guys are commonly spoofing calls to you using numbers near to your own.