PSA: What is Spoofing? | Musings & Notes

What is spoofing?

Spoofing is basically having a phone number show up on a caller ID that belongs to someone else.

You get a missed call (or you decline a call), and you decide to call back — only the other person on the phone is confused and say that they never called you, and now you're confused too because you automatically called the number from your missed call log or recent call log. 

As a matter-of-fact, you're staring at your phone right now. You know you called the number you're looking at!

Hey, you've been spoofed!

Scammers can call your phone and have any random number show up on your caller ID. 

Unfortunately, it's perfectly legal too. 

It adds on to fraud, identity theft, and other crimes — think about it, someone can call spoofing your legit number, commit a crime, and maybe you're on the hook for the crime because it was your number on the caller ID... not even joking!

How are you able to prove your innocence in some hideous crime (short of a video surveillance at Walmart showing a Hi-Def picture of your face looking straight at the camera for the date and time in question)? 

Well, it definitely doesn't look good and you will have to prove you didn't make that nefarious call, but you are able to by showing your call log from your service provider.

Thankfully, because of situations like spoofing, cell phone providers have detail call and text logs for account holders that are accessible right away... kind of like checking your banking or credit cards to make sure everything is where it's supposed to be.

A lot of time what scammers will do is use a number with the same area code and prefix as yours. 

For example, someone from NYC seeing a 718 area code knows it's a local number, and the prefix will tell them what neighborhood; so if my number was (718)746, and I see a number calling me with that area code and prefix, it would make me more likely to answer the call thinking it's someone I know, or a legit caller.

Why are you being spoofed?

It's usually not personal and instead is just random. Scammers want your money, basically, so they do it by hoping to get money out of you through fraud or identity theft — by pretending they're the IRS, your credit card company, the doctor's office, the insurance company, etc. 

They do it with the hope that they're convincing enough (and you're gullible and naive enough) to give them banking information, personal identity information, credit card information, etc.

So what do you do to protect yourself?

Here's the simplest advice I can give you. 

Don't answer the call if you don't recognize the number. 

Every legit caller will leave a message, (but sometimes scammers will leave a message too). 

Never give out personal information over the phone, always verify a caller yourself. 

If they say they're calling about your credit card, hang up, go find your credit card and call the number on the back of the card yourself.

Also, be careful of using your credit card online, especially if you're on a public or guest wifi because it's not secure. 

Utilize all the apps that are available to you like your phone provider, retailers that you shop at frequently, banking and credit card apps — set notifications for these apps; this was done by the banking industry to help fight against identity theft. 

You can set your limit to like $5, where you get a text or email (or both) if anything over your set amount has been charged to your account.

In many ways, it's now easier to catch a criminal, but in many ways, it's now also easier to be a criminal too.