We are constantly bombarded on our land line* with calls from spoofed phone numbers. Many of them are easy to recognize because the caller ID says “out of area” even when the area code and even the exchange is the same as ours.
But lately these calls have been accompanied by what look like real names. So I’m wondering if they are spoofing so many numbers that some of them come associated with names, or are they somehow adding names to their spoofed numbers, or are they specifically selecting real phone numbers used by other land line subscribers to spoof with?
Of course we still don’t pick up if we don’t recognize the name or number, I’m just curious why this has evolved this way.
*Our provider, AT&T, does not participate in any programs to limit or prevent spam or scam phone calls, as far as I’ve been able to find out.
The name is not transmitted by the caller. The calling phone number goes to the receiving phone company, who looks it up in a central database then adds it to the information sent to your phone when they connect the call. If you are getting “out of area,” it may mean the number is not actually assigned or not in the database for some reason. I don’t know about the SOLMS KAREN situation.
I haven’t bothered to note down the names and numbers to see if the numbers being used are real and belong to those named callers. But it sounds like maybe they found that using inactive numbers for spoofing was less effective than using active ones, so people would think a real person is calling.
A few years ago, I Googled the number of a spam call and stumbled onto something called “Hodges Directory,” which appears to be a database of fake phone numbers accompanied by fake names and addresses. I posted about it here.
People are probably more inclined to answer a call if the caller ID information has a name, so apparently somebody cooked up a lot of fake names for spammers to use. Many of the names are peculiar. For example, the Hodges listing for Foosland, Illinois (a real town with a population of 101) includes Molzen Molzen, Aaron Pedowitz, Tylyn Blaylock, and Ozzie Abalde.
Huh, that’s really interesting (and diabolical). I still wonder why the names have been showing up so much more often in the last few weeks than they ever did before, but I suppose it could be different spammers or something. Thanks for the info.
On my cell, many of the spam calls are from out of area with no name or the word UNKNOWN. Those are no brainers to ignore. But for about the last 6 months or so, I’ve been getting spam calls where the number displayed is MINE and the name displayed is also MINE! The wife and I laugh about these calls now but the first few times were definitely WTF is going on here!
I’m not sure how you implement a working blocking service in the era of VOIP. I use a well-reviewed blocking/flagging service on my mobile phone and still get 3+ spam calls a week. Worse yet, I sometimes don’t receive calls at all (my veterinarian and probably more I’m not aware of…) or legit calls are flagged as being possibly spam (my bank).