I wouldn't say I'm anti-social, but I rarely answer the phone. Unless I recognize the number that pops up on my caller ID as a client, one of our kids or my mother, I generally let it go to voicemail. Probably 75% of the time there is no message because it's a telemarketer of some kind. Maybe 20% of the time there is a message, but it's either a public service announcement ("this is a reminder that the county mobile shredder will be in your area on Tuesday") or a less-sophisticated robocaller that seems to be in continuous looping mode("-gage rates, press 1. For auto rates, press 2. Hello! Are you paying more for cred-"). As to the remainder that are real people with whom I'm happy to talk, my apologies: leave a message and I promise to call you back.
It used to be the simple way to parse that remaining 5% was to look at the first six digits of the incoming number. That's because among the things that you used to be able to count on (like death, taxes, an insulting tweet from the President) was that when the area code and exchange was the same as yours, with only the last four digits differing, it was likely someone local was trying to reach you. Might be your pharmacist verifying a prescription, the class mom making sure you knew about the bake sale or your pal down the street seeing if there's any chance you had any fresh limes for gin and tonics.
Not so much anymore. The latest phone scam, up over 1500% this year, is called "neighbor spoofing." Numbers used to be assigned by a phone company, and that was the readout that came up on your caller ID. But since the growth of Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, software has enabled users to enter any number they want to appear as the originating caller. And some hacker figured out that calls appearing to come from your hood were far more likely to be answered than those from an area code in Slovenia.
And so that call that looks like it is coming from down the block could certainly be from Sally asking you if you want to take a walk. But it could just as easily be from Serge who says he works for Hilton and is telling you have just won an all-expenses paid vacation to Disney World if you'll only just give him your credit card number to cover a few miscellaneous incidentals. Sally, Serge: easy to get them confused.
But even the best scams are not perfect. After all, there are only so many combinations of 4 randomized digits available to plug into that final position (9999 to be precise if you throw out the obvious faker of 0000). And so some consumers have reported hearing the phone ring and looking at the readout to see that they are calling themselves. You can almost hear the horror movie voiceover: "The call was coming from INSIDE the house. NOOOOOO!"
Experts say that if you get a call that is not from who you think it should be, just hang up. Any interaction only confirms that there is a human there that might be scammable. In the meantime, the FCC is working on the problem, helped along by the fact that Chairman Ajit Pai has been spoofed himself. As he related in a recent interview, "Oh, yeah. It'll seem to be coming from the 202 area code, which is here in Washington, and then our prefix for these BlackBerries. And I know for a fact that it's probably not someone calling from the office. I know most of the folks who would be calling. And sometimes, I answer just for the heck of it. And lo and behold, I've won a vacation from Marriott."
Chairman Pai says the fix would be to embed some sort of a digital footprint into every number so you know from where it originates. But that tweak is likely years away. Until that time, the agency is also trying enforcement to cow the callers. In June they recommended a $120 million fine against a robocaller who made 96 million spoofed calls.
Just one problem: they have to get him on the phone to collect.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford usually emails or texts before he tries calling.
His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
It used to be the simple way to parse that remaining 5% was to look at the first six digits of the incoming number. That's because among the things that you used to be able to count on (like death, taxes, an insulting tweet from the President) was that when the area code and exchange was the same as yours, with only the last four digits differing, it was likely someone local was trying to reach you. Might be your pharmacist verifying a prescription, the class mom making sure you knew about the bake sale or your pal down the street seeing if there's any chance you had any fresh limes for gin and tonics.
Not so much anymore. The latest phone scam, up over 1500% this year, is called "neighbor spoofing." Numbers used to be assigned by a phone company, and that was the readout that came up on your caller ID. But since the growth of Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, software has enabled users to enter any number they want to appear as the originating caller. And some hacker figured out that calls appearing to come from your hood were far more likely to be answered than those from an area code in Slovenia.
And so that call that looks like it is coming from down the block could certainly be from Sally asking you if you want to take a walk. But it could just as easily be from Serge who says he works for Hilton and is telling you have just won an all-expenses paid vacation to Disney World if you'll only just give him your credit card number to cover a few miscellaneous incidentals. Sally, Serge: easy to get them confused.
But even the best scams are not perfect. After all, there are only so many combinations of 4 randomized digits available to plug into that final position (9999 to be precise if you throw out the obvious faker of 0000). And so some consumers have reported hearing the phone ring and looking at the readout to see that they are calling themselves. You can almost hear the horror movie voiceover: "The call was coming from INSIDE the house. NOOOOOO!"
Experts say that if you get a call that is not from who you think it should be, just hang up. Any interaction only confirms that there is a human there that might be scammable. In the meantime, the FCC is working on the problem, helped along by the fact that Chairman Ajit Pai has been spoofed himself. As he related in a recent interview, "Oh, yeah. It'll seem to be coming from the 202 area code, which is here in Washington, and then our prefix for these BlackBerries. And I know for a fact that it's probably not someone calling from the office. I know most of the folks who would be calling. And sometimes, I answer just for the heck of it. And lo and behold, I've won a vacation from Marriott."
Chairman Pai says the fix would be to embed some sort of a digital footprint into every number so you know from where it originates. But that tweak is likely years away. Until that time, the agency is also trying enforcement to cow the callers. In June they recommended a $120 million fine against a robocaller who made 96 million spoofed calls.
Just one problem: they have to get him on the phone to collect.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford usually emails or texts before he tries calling.
His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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