We keep getting calls that our caller ID tells us are from Northbrook, a nearby suburb. Every time I get one on my cell phone, I block it. As of now, I have 23 blocked phone numbers. Were I to accept one of these, I’d discover that it was some pre-recorded pitches for one thing or another. How do the marketers keep doing this? Is it easy to make a call and have the caller ID report that it’s from someplace else? And mainly, can I stop it?
Spoofing
Yes
No
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I don’t know why, but neither phones not cell providers seem to offer any easy facility to block countries or area codes.
The solution I have found for iPhone is an app called WideProtect that will block all calls (sent to voicemail) beginning with a pattern of at least three numbers, i.e. an area code or some subset of an area code. It allows numbers in your contacts, but since the phone software doesn’t seem to allow pattern recognition, it appears to generate a huge list of all blocked numbers, so you need to re-generate the blocked list to allow any new number added to your contacts.
Works great, though. It’s perfect if (like many people) you have moved away from the location of your cellphone area code.
The term for this is “neighbor spoofing”. Apparently, people making VoIP calls can also change the caller ID identity to anything they like and they match the first six digits of your phone number so you’ll think it’s a local call and be more likely to pick up.
It seems to happen to some people more than others. Not only do I get a couple of spoofed calls a week, I’ve also gotten two irate calls from actual people who wanted to know why I kept calling them, so I know someone out there is using my number as a fake caller ID as well.
One advantage to keeping your number when moving is that it makes this easier to spot. I still have a 404 (Atlanta) number. If I’m called from a 404 number outside my contact list it almost certainly is a scam / telemarketer. If I’m called from a 206 / 425 (Seattle and surroundings) number it almost certainly is a legitimate local business that I have a relationship with.
There is also an App called Hiya that keeps an ever growing database of spam numbers and automatically blocks them.
Cut my annoying calls from 5-6 per day to once or twice a week. That’s typically a reminder to open the app and update the list.
It helps a lot to think about caller ID like the return address on an envelope. Telemarketers can put anything there.
It is completely pointless to block one of these spoofers. They just keep using other numbers. There’s no point from their point of view to reuse the same one. Don’t waste your time.
It used to be very hard, until VOIP came along. Then it got really easy. Agree that it’s pointless to block individual numbers. I get a lot of calls like this but never the same number twice.
People have even reported getting an incoming call that showed their own number as the Caller ID number.
My wife uses that, and is also very happy with it. We use NoMoRobo for our landline, and it blocks most of the spoofed local calls. It looks for patterns, like a ton of calls coming from one number or a group of numbers in rapid succession, as well as keeping lists of suspicious numbers. 90% of our calls are caught on the first ring.
It continues to astonish me that Apple still hasn’t added a “send all numbers not in my address book directly to voice mail” toggle to iPhones.
Is there something like that for Android?
Not with the “official” Google Dialer program (on Nexus/Pixel devices, in other words, purely Android).
Even “suspected spam” calls go through, but those are flagged that way.
I think there’s a reluctance to allow the user to block calls they may need someday. One day the call from a stranger is a spam call; the next day, it’s your kid calling from the side of the road using a good Samaritan’s phone because his own phone was destroyed along with the car he was driving. :eek:
Even if it’s something that has to be explicitly enabled by the customer, one tragic event is all it will take for the blamestorm and lawsuits.
I believe Google Voice does this but then you need to get a new phone number.
My kid will leave a voicemail.
Yep to both. I asked a question on the Dope earlier this year or possibly last year about this. I’ve gotten the “phone call from myself” call, and tons of phone calls with the same first six digits of my phone number (area code and exchange prefix, i.e. the first three numbers after the area code.) As I don’t know a single person with my exchange prefix, that’s just a clue for me to ignore the phone call.
I get 3-5 calls a day allegedly from a nearby suburb, but showing the same area code and prefix as my own number. I don’t know anyone in that suburb, regularly ignore the calls and no one ever leaves a message. Pretty clear they’re telemarketers.
The easiest thing of all is - never answer any call unless you’re expecting someone to call you and/or you recognize the number.
What is the worst that happens? They leave a message, you listen to it and call them back. You also now know their phone number for the future.
Unless you’ve got really dumb friends who never leave messages or tell you their number.
Actually, it was possible to send any number with an ISDN PRI line, and that goes back 20+ years. It would have been trivial for the telcos to enforce a “must be set to a number assigned to you” rule, which would solve the most common legitimate case (generally sending the main business number when calling from some random extension), but there was no $ in it for them, so they didn’t.
I have a number of things I do (I’m my own phone company) - all incoming callers get a “boop-boop” UK type ring tone. That confuses some predictive dialers. Repeat offenders (unlike you, I do see repeated attempts from the same number, sometimes several times a day) get subjected to a variety of torture, depending on the mood I’m in:
- SIT tone (boo-da-beep) “The number you have reached, nine one one, has been changed to a non-published number” (in official “Jane” voice).
- Music-on-hold from hell “Your call is very… im p o rrrrrrtan t to usssssss.” and so forth, with the world’s most obnoxious low-fi music. Nobody has lasted the full 15 minutes of this recording.
- My favorite - loop da loop - I collect various inbound telemarketing numbers (the “Please call us back for an important message about your credit card” that turns out to be somebody wanting to sell timeshares in a swamp) and randomly connect telemarketers who call me to those numbers. Hilarity ensues (at least on my part).
A new feature just recently rolled out from Verizon, they add “SPAM?..” to the caller ID from spam calls. This way you can decide if you want to answer them or not.
Yesterday I got a call on my landline, the caller ID said: Illegal Scam. And the message they left was the BS about my computer being compromised, call a number to have it fixed.
Also Mr. Number does the same.