How does this caller ID spoofing work?

September 3, 2014 7:52 PM

I've gotten a few voice mail messages today from a phony debt collector. It is an obvious scam (they don't know my name, they threaten to appear at my door with "a government official" unless I call them back) so I'm not worried about it and I'm ignoring it. But I am curious about the caller ID spoofing they are using.

The first call showed up as unknown, but the second had a local area code and exchange to my cell phone number. I assume this is to frighten me into thinking the debt collector is on his way to my home. Is there some sort of service or program scammers use that automatically generates a spoofed number based on the victim's phone number?

posted by interplanetjanet to Technology (1 answer total)

I don't know, but for about one month we have been getting a spate of charity fundraiser calls from our area code, and at first we picked them up thinking it was a neighbor. Before this we would get zero local charity calls from our area code because no charities are based here. So I believe, yes, spoofing a local area code is a new scam.
posted by cda at 7:31 AM on September 4, 2014