We’ve all heard of phone scams where the caller, using a robotic dialer, a stock message, and a spoofed CID, tries to extract credit card data or sell something.
Like this, (15 secs, audio) recorded a few minutes ago:
At the end, you can hear me trying to press “1” as the desired response. Nothing happened after, and the line eventually hung up.
*69 gave the same number as the CID.
Nothing new, right? But the Caller ID, which we know can be spoofed, gave a local number 2 digits away from one of mine!
I called that number, and the owner confirmed that the number was hers, but claimed ignorance about any kind of automatic call. I think she is believable. Around here, wrong numbers are not insults, and we try to help each other when they inevitably happen.
So my point is that the crooks are getting smarter. They are programming their outgoing CID to be close to the recipient’s number, which makes the recipient think it is a local call.
Is this a reasonable interpretation? Or am I missing something?