Call Spoofing

What is Spoofing?

“Phone spoofing” refers to the number that appears on the caller ID. It’s used to trick people into picking up calls they otherwise wouldn’t (and get around the National Do Not Call Registry). For a shady caller from outside the area – and often the country – a local number is less likely to raise suspicion.

What can I do?

Someone is spoofing your number for malicious reasons. They somehow found your phone number on the internet and are using cheap, easy-to-find Spoofing software to emulate your caller ID. Because of US laws that prohibit this, there is a 99.99% chance that this is being done from outside the borders of the US.

In the meantime, there is nothing we can do about the spoofing. These calls are being made outside our network, so we have no visibility into them. What we can do is try to mitigate the results.

1. You can block incoming calls, leave a message explaining what happened, and, in effect, hope it stops before too long; or
2. You can change your number. Of course, that also means notifying friends, family, and professional contacts (and perhaps changing your business cards, too).

If you don’t feel safe, you can also take the extra step of changing your passwords (which is never a bad idea).

If you would like more information, you can check out the FCC’s Caller ID and Spoofing page here.

The silver lining here is that phone spoofing doesn’t equate to your phone – or its data – being accessed by someone else. Of course, that doesn’t make it any less annoying or disconcerting if it happens to you.

This article from Securityadvocate.com explains exactly what has happened. It uses Cell Phone Lines as an example, but Spoofing can happen to any phone number.

Spoofing normally affects a number for a short time, so it should eventually end fairly soon. If you would like us to assign you a different telephone number, please reach out to our Customer Care Team. That ultimately will be the quickest fix.