Normally when I get calls from numbers I don’t recognize, I’m able to Google them and see what they are before calling them back (or not).
But lately I’ve been getting calls from something that doesn’t even come up as a number: *c
I can’t seem to Google it to any degree of success, so I throw the question to the Teeming Millions: What or who the heck is calling me? I refuse to answer from something so suspicious looking, so don’t suggest that. Anyone else getting calls from this, or something similar?
Well now we’re getting somewhere…I had no idea what VOIP was, so I googled it. According to Wiki, “Many VoIP carriers allow callers to configure arbitrary caller ID information, thus permitting spoofing attacks. Business-grade VoIP equipment and software often makes it easy to modify caller ID information, providing many businesses great flexibility.”
Maybe some telemarketing company is calling me with VOIP, and is spoofing their caller ID. Don’t know why they’d spoof it to read *c though. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence and trust.
I’ve raised the question in other threads related to caller ID: Why in the ever-loving fucking blazes was the Caller ID protocol ever designed in the first place to allow end-user manipulation of the Caller ID number? Who could possibly have ever thought that was a good idea?
Caller ID has two lines of text: The originating phone number, and the description (usually the caller’s name). I can see that it makes sense for an end user (the caller) to be able to specify whatever he wants for his name-or-description field. But the end user should never have been given control of the phone number field. That should be inserted by the originator’s telco, and should have always been this way, and should never have been controllable by the caller.
The only control the caller should ever have had over the caller number field should be whether to display it or not. But if displayed, it should have always been the actual originating number. I just can’t belieeeeeve that the original designers of the Caller ID protocol could have fucked it up so badly as to not require this.
It is likely either a bill collector(whether you actually owe or not is irrelevant, they look for similar names in the same city, someone who had your number before etc) or a scammer such as the “Calling from Microsoft scam”.
Check to see if your phone allows you to set a “send directly to voicemail” flag on contacts. If so, add that one to your contacts list and set that flag. I’ve done that with spam calls on my phone (android, I don’t think iphones support this).
I believe that was done for businesses with multiple outgoing lines. The caller-ID could be configured to display the main response number instead of the actual number of the outgoing line (which might not even be dialable for incoming calls).
Mind you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the customer should be allowed to mess with it…
I have an Android app called Call Control on my phone. I was getting credit card telemarketer phone calls all the time. Call Control stopped them. Even the free version allows you to add a couple of numbers to your ‘black list’ which blocks those calls. The paid version allows a lot more.
It has options like Block Private Calls; Block Unknown calls; Block Non-numeric Sender ID; and more that might help in the OPs situation.
Right. The business (the customer here) can advise the Telco what number he wants displayed, and the Telco then injects that data into the outgoing Caller ID packet. The customer should NOT be allowed to mess with it! (ETA: And, of course, the Telco should only permit some reasonable value to be put there, for example, the scenario Sunspace describes.)
The customer can definitely change the outbound caller ID. This is only done on a PRI or SIP trunk.
There are a few reasons that this would be done. The two most common are setting the outbound number when a user wants a call to show up from their DID number (personal line) and the other is when a call is transferred from inside an organization, the caller ID is changed to show the number of the original calling party.
Another common use is in call centers that serve different clients, they can set the outbound caller ID to show as the correct company.
All legitimate, and completely controlled by the client. I actually know a few that send a pattern of digits instead of legitimate numbers.
I assume he is like me and he is going on the assumption that if he does not recognize the number then the call is mostly like some marketing call he does not care to listen to. If by chance this is not the case then they will leave a message if it is important.
On my iPhone, I add spam calls to a “Spam” contact, and have that contact set to silent ring and no vibrate. So it doesn’t go directly to voicemail, but if I’m not actively looking at the phone, it’s close enough.
