Someone is spoofing my cell number. Should I be worried?

April 6, 2018 7:09 AM

I just got a call from a very nice woman who informed me that every morning at 9:45 she gets a call from my number. Should I be worried and/or is there anything I can do about this?

I assume it's some scammer spoofing my cell number.

She was very friendly and was in no way trying to scam me. She seemed a bit annoyed that she was getting these calls every morning so she wanted to find out why I was calling her and if I wasn't calling her, then she just wanted me to know this was happening. She had suspected it wasn't actually me calling her. We had a very nice chat. To be clear: I am 100% certain this person was telling the truth.

She was calling from a somewhat local number.

I have an iPhone that I keep in my shirt pocket so I know I'm not butt dialing her by accident. There's nothing in my call history.

So what can I do about this? Do I even need to do anything? If it matters, I use AT&T and I've had the same cell number for over a decade.

posted by bondcliff to Technology (8 answers total)

Best answer: Nothing you can do or need to worry about. The "local number" spoofing thing is getting big, everyone's number is being spoofed, and there's no way to prevent it and it's not about you. Sucks for that woman, of course (though it's actually nice that it's always the same number because at least she can block it), but for you it's just a shrug and move on.
posted by brainmouse at 7:44 AM on April 6, 2018 [9 favorites]

Best answer: I very specifically do not answer calls from my area code unless it's somebody already in my contact list. The local number spoofing is so bad it has the opposite effect on me. I am immediately suspicious of any local call.
posted by COD at 9:40 AM on April 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Agree with brainmouse. I've also heard this called "neighbor spoofing". It's done so much that the spoofed numbers must mostly be real peoples' numbers. I wouldn't worry about it.
posted by radioamy at 10:26 AM on April 6, 2018

Yeah I am on the other end of this pretty much daily, getting calls from numbers that, if it were a landline, would be people in my community, i.e. the same area code and prefix. I have never looked to see if they're the same numbers every day or not, because I just ignore them.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:39 AM on April 6, 2018

There are apps you can install that use aggregate crowd-sourcing to identify suspected spam callers.
posted by edbles at 11:08 AM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

As an anecdote, a friend of mine was recently house sitting for his parents while they were out of town and a call came in to his cell phone identified as "Mom & Dad." The local spoofer, just by chance I hope, was actually spoofing the number of the house he was in and was already in his contacts.
posted by glonous keming at 6:55 AM on April 7, 2018

I get 2 or 3 of these a week on my iPhone. I block the number afterwards, every time, so I can say that whoever is calling me is using different numbers every time. I've got nomorobo on my land line, but it requires a subscription for a cell. It may be time to bite the bullet. Once it was my own number calling.
posted by qurlyjoe at 7:12 AM on April 7, 2018

As trivial as it is to spoof caller ID I am surprised that this did not start happening a long time ago.
posted by jmsta at 12:09 PM on April 7, 2018