A New Kind of Caller ID Spoofing: Neighbor SpoofingBetter Business BureauAre you experiencing an increase in the number of local calls to your home and/or cell phone? You’re not alone. This phenomenon is called “neighbor spoofing” and it’s the latest strategy being used by scam artists in an attempt to get people to answer the phone. For phone scams to be successful, scammers need people to pick up the phone so they can initiate the conversation. Neighbor spoofing is used to trick a person into thinking somebody local, possibly even someone they know, is calling. According to experts, this may interest someone just enough to answer their phone. Con artists and robocallers use technology to modify what phone numbers appear on caller ID, impersonating phone numbers from neighbors, friends and local businesses to try to get you to answer the call. In many instances, it is a random number with the same area code and first three digits as your own phone number. In other cases, the number displays as coming from a local business or person in which you’ve previously communicated. Answering one of these spoofed calls will indicate to the robocaller that you have an active phone line. Active phone lines are valuable to phone scammers and will often put you on what is referred to as a “sucker list,” potentially opening your phone line up to more scam calls. Here are a few BBB tips to help identify and handle “neighbor spoofing” phone calls:
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2018 Alice Business Today - May 2018 |