Phone Scam

I’m no telecommunications expert but have learned just enough by supporting our ancient 10+ year old PBX at work just to be dangerous. All outbound calls show our main phone number, not the individual DID. This was done by design years ago by whoever set it up at the time so our individual DIDs aren’t out there for all to know. I wrongly assumed this was a function from the service provider, not a function of the PBX. A few years ago when we were in the process of switching from Windstream’s PRI over copper, to PRI over fiber from Time Warner, now Spectrum Enterprise, I asked our account manager about the outbound caller ID. And that’s when I found out it’s tied to the PBX. He did make mention that there may be legalities because of how one can interpret the definition of caller ID spoofing, but said a lot of companies do what we do and not to worry about it.

Our DIDs have been spoofed before by scammers, and people have called up screaming and yelling that we’re trying to scam them, and our receptionists usually transfer the calls to me. It’s usually old people who have no idea what caller ID spoofing is, but the name of the company I work for shows up along with the DID. Every time this has happened that I am aware of, the spoofed IDs weren’t even active at the time, so when if you dial the DID back it’ just ring and rings. So I’m guessing these people looked up our company name in the phone book (Do those existing anymore?) and called our main number back and through the auto attendant pressed 0 to get to a receptionist and the receptionist transferred the call to me.

I explain to all of these people that we are a real company, and if anyone from our office were to legitimately call you the number that would show up would be the main number, not the one they saw and it will never under any circumstance show any of our direct dial numbers.

On my home number, I have received multiple spoofed calls with the CID information being from the Tim Horton’s two towns over. That one was added to my blacklist pretty quickly.
 
I’m no telecommunications expert but have learned just enough by supporting our ancient 10+ year old PBX at work just to be dangerous. All outbound calls show our main phone number, not the individual DID. This was done by design years ago by whoever set it up at the time so our individual DIDs aren’t out there for all to know. I wrongly assumed this was a function from the service provider, not a function of the PBX. A few years ago when we were in the process of switching from Windstream’s PRI over copper, to PRI over fiber from Time Warner, now Spectrum Enterprise, I asked our account manager about the outbound caller ID. And that’s when I found out it’s tied to the PBX. He did make mention that there may be legalities because of how one can interpret the definition of caller ID spoofing, but said a lot of companies do what we do and not to worry about it.

Our DIDs have been spoofed before by scammers, and people have called up screaming and yelling that we’re trying to scam them, and our receptionists usually transfer the calls to me. It’s usually old people who have no idea what caller ID spoofing is, but the name of the company I work for shows up along with the DID. Every time this has happened that I am aware of, the spoofed IDs weren’t even active at the time, so when if you dial the DID back it’ just ring and rings. So I’m guessing these people looked up our company name in the phone book (Do those existing anymore?) and called our main number back and through the auto attendant pressed 0 to get to a receptionist and the receptionist transferred the call to me.

I explain to all of these people that we are a real company, and if anyone from our office were to legitimately call you the number that would show up would be the main number, not the one they saw and it will never under any circumstance show any of our direct dial numbers.

On my home number, I have received multiple spoofed calls with the CID information being from the Tim Horton’s two towns over. That one was added to my blacklist pretty quickly.

As long as you (or your company) own the number being masked, you’re good
 
We have been spoofed before also.

Back in the day when the press 1 auto dialers where being used by many many dish retailers, many times these other retailers would go to an online Directory and pick a number of another retailer to display as the caller ID for their robo call campaign.

When this happens, only option was to kill the phone number.

Not only to stop the calls from people calling to cuss you out thinking you called them, but the fact they would file complaints with government.

Then Dish would get the complaint, and investigate who owns the number and I would get a nice little nasty gram in the mail from Dish for something I was never involved with.

For the hassle, it was easier to kill the phone number sometimes than deal with the dish compliance natzies
 
Here is one. Dish was involved with a dispute with WISH Tv an affiliate out of I believe Indianapolis.

For some reason WISH looked up our number, thought we where Dish and ran it as a crawl on customers Tv’s as a number to call and complain.

It wasn’t a spoof, but we sold a lot of Directv that day after calming people down and explaining the situation.
 
Here is one. Dish was involved with a dispute with WISH Tv an affiliate out of I believe Indianapolis.

For some reason WISH looked up our number, thought we where Dish and ran it as a crawl on customers Tv’s as a number to call and complain.

It wasn’t a spoof, but we sold a lot of Directv that day after calming people down and explaining the situation.

Nice!
 
All that has to happen is make it illegal to spoof a number that you don't "own" or have registered. Would satisfy the legitimate business needs as well as limit fraud.
This has been my argument all along. Let me use whatever numbers I own when I make an outgoing call but don't allow me to spoof. Seems like a very easy fix to a major problem.
 
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String 'em along as long as you can. Eventually they will figure out what you are doing and curse you out, but it's so much fun and it keeps them off other peoples backs!
 
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The month's Consumer Reports had a good Letter to the Editors:
August 2018 Consumers Report said:
My late husband recorded a message along the lines of "Thank you for calling. All of our family members are busy helping other telemarketers. Please hold and the next available family member will assist you." I just hold up that to the phone. Oh, and it includes music from a horrible opera.
 
I really appreciate how closely the Microsoft Tech Support Center monitors my computer needs.

Update: Received another call from them about ten minutes after writing the above post.

I get those calls. Pretend you have a Mac, and really screw with them.

Then they asked me to go to the internet and I played one of those old dialup sound bytes from AOL that finishes with “you’ve got mail”

Then they kept on asking for my email and I was saying ... www dot aol dot com

after 45 minutes they cussed me out and hung up
 
I get those calls. Pretend you have a Mac, and really screw with them.

Then they asked me to go to the internet and I played one of those old dialup sound bytes from AOL that finishes with “you’ve got mail”

Then they kept on asking for my email and I was saying ... www dot aol dot com

after 45 minutes they cussed me out and hung up

Good for you. That’s how you’ve gotta get these guys. I tell them I’m a police officer.
 
There’s a new scam going around right now. Caller claims to be from Verizon (or whichever carrier you use), telling you that you’ve overpaid on your account by $36. All you have to do is provide your CC number and they’ll refund it back. When I told them they could just credit my account, they said that wasn’t possible. :oldlaugh
 
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