New "to me anyway" text scam

S

samven

Joined
Jun 11, 2003
Messages
1,228
Location
Hedgesville, WV
Recently I enrolled my cell number on the Do Not Call list. What a mistake that was. Within a week I was getting 3 or 4 scam calls a day. In the last week a new one has started. I am getting text messages saying things like, Stop texting me, No I am not interested, Please stop annoying me and others. They are all coming from different area codes and I assume they are fishing for a response to verify an active number.
I really wish the Infrastructure Bill included a few million to chase these people down.
 
A coworker had that happen.. they were spamming people spoofing my coworkers number..
large numbers of Grumpy (mostly old) people constantly "calling him back" and cussing him out.

He tried to explain he didnt call anyone but it didnt help.

People just dont understand caller ID.

I could make it say 911 was calling if I wanted to. etc.

A big scam they set their number to a business's home office then call store and scam them out of gift cards telling them they need their help to test register etc.

An example I know of. Scammer sets their number to Giant Eagle's Pittsburgh main office number.. then calls and tells them they need to take a register out of service for testing.. they have manager names etc.. It actually worked for $$$$ quite a few times.
 
I can vouch for that, I had someone call me a few times one morning and I didn't recognize the number so I finally answered it and he said that I had called him which I knew I hadn't so I told him that evidently my number had been spoofed and to look it up online. You can't really do anything to protect yourself, I'm with Google Fi and have a call answering service and supposed to filter out unwanted calls but if it hears a voice on the other end it pushes it through especially the car warranty scams.

I complained to Google about it but basically the only other thing I can do is to set my phone to the do not disturb mode, my phone no longer rings for callers not in my contacts but does show them in the missed call list and I occasionally get voicemail that is a few seconds of dead silence.

The ones that typically call back are older people who don't understand or can even grasp what call spoofing is and that it is in fact legal as long as it's used for lawful purposes as not to commit fraud but most of the spoofing happens from overseas who do not pay attention nor care about our laws over here.
 
Once the scammers learned how to dynamically spoof their caller ID, the game was over for "do not callx, nomorobo, etc. I've recieved calls that had MY number as the CID. I understand using a false CID is in violation of FCC laws - but it's just another example of how the federal government picks and chooses which laws (and who violates them) they choose to enforce.
 
Touring5 said:
Once the scammers learned how to dynamically spoof their caller ID, the game was over for "do not callx, nomorobo, etc. I've recieved calls that had MY number as the CID. I understand using a false CID is in violation of FCC laws - but it's just another example of how the federal government picks and chooses which laws (and who violates them) they choose to enforce.
Click to expand...
Same here . Twice .
 
Call spoofing does have it's merits but in reality it's seriously flawed, one of the reasons is so that the technician coming to provide service can call you from their cell phone but it appears as it's coming from corporate so you don't get their cell number. IMHO the negatives far outweigh the benefits and spoofing should be illegal but that would only apply to inside the country and not those who are outside of it.
 
I'm so sick and tired of the nuisance and serious crimes and scams, spammers, junk email, physical junk mail, click-bait, number theft, and crimes in general... I really wish our great leaders would take this stuff seriously.
 
Well I am pretty sure these are scams, today I got 3 within 10 min and they all said exactly the same thing but from different numbers. I am not sure how spoofing a number works but I imagine no matter what number shows up if I responded it would go to the real originating number and they would be notified they got a live one. I never answer the phone unless its in my contacts, just let it go to voice mail and I never respond to texts unless I am sure I know who I am responding too.
 
The number of calls I get has really tapered off since I started answering and immediately putting the call on mute. 99% of the time, there's silence from the other side, which is the robodialer waiting to hear a voice. When it doesn't get a response, it hangs up. Some of the robodialers may be logging the call as an invalid number and they don't try it again.

My wish is that "call block" on cell phones actually blocked the call, instead of just sending it to voicemail. When I block a number on my landline, it just gives the caller a tone until they hang up. The phone never rings. Why can't my cell do that?
 
samven said:
I never answer the phone unless its in my contacts, just let it go to voice mail and I never respond to texts unless I am sure I know who I am responding too.
Click to expand...
I do the same thing, that's all you can do. If it's someone not in my contacts and they are legitimate and it's important then they will leave a voicemail.
 
I have had Google Fi since it was called Project Fi. They have recently done a much better job at catching bogus calls & texts. Sometimes the phone will ring once and Fi catches it, other times it doesn't ring at all but the bogus call goes to the spam/blocked list. The blocked call list on my Pixel 5a is well over a thousand so far. Most are calls the system caught and some I answered and blocked afterwards.
 
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