Folks - Why are you answering these calls? They are always scams!!!
And DON'T call them back! If you do, you confirmed that you have a live, working phone number - a number that can be sold to other criminals or used in their next calling campaign.
Purchase a call blocking phone or device that can block entire area codes.
We have EVERY area code in FL, TX and Wash. State BLOCKED!
Our phones DO NOT RING when a blocked call comes in.
Received call on my cell phone @ 6:40 AM from Rachael (recorded message). Pressed 1 as requested to speak to a live person. Recorded music but no one was there to speak to.
6:27 am. Is there any way to report the number to get the ball rolling on stopping all this "spoofing"? There should be laws against it as it is allowing for access to private informationand it feels like harassment. Plus the time? Ridiculous.
Um.
There ARE laws against spoofing, and have been since 2009.
Do you really think laws stop all criminal activity?
We can no longer believe the phone number we see on our caller IDs (CID) belongs to the person who called! The bad guys are now using easily accessed technology to "spoof" the CID numbers, so their real number does not appear.
The problem has gotten so bad, the US government actually passed an Act, called "The Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009", making such spoofing illegal. See http://www.fcc.gov/guides/caller-id-and-spoofing
for more information.
The FCC adopted that Act in June, 2010, stating that violators could be fined up to $10,000 for each violation.
However, the bad guys are ignoring this law ... after all, they are criminals, and that is what criminals do. Although we now have a "law" against spoofing, it is very difficult to enforce it.
So, if you see a CID number on your phone when you are called by some scammer or telemarketer, it might not belong to the scammer! It might be the number of some unsuspecting third party ... or, it might be one of those numbers that charge $25 (plus about $9 per minute) if you call it back, or the number might not be "real" at all.