These phone scammers are truly despicable.... surely something can be done?

Mickey666

Ectophile said:

The problem is that the telephone companies in the UK aren't checking that caller ID numbers generated by customers are genuine. Anyone with a digital exchange on their premises can generate their own caller IDs, and there is nothing in place to check them.

OFCOM needs to stop being the feeble regulator, and start telling phone service providers that they are responsible for checking caller ID, and that they will be held responsible if fake caller IDs get on to the phone network.

Perhaps.  Once upon a time there was no caller ID but presumably someone thought it would be a good idea so it was introduced.  Now we're complaining because a relatively few people abuse it.  There's always the option to disable caller ID.

Having said that, in practice I'm not sure how spoofing a caller ID really helps to fool people, except to pretend they're calling from within the UK, because how many people would recognise a genuine HMRC or bank number anyway?

Money_Grabber13579

I have a phone issued to me through work and all of our work phones have been issued with a block of numbers, so the phone numbers for all phones will look very similar. I’ve now started receiving nuisance calls (about illegal activity having been committed with my national insurance number) where the caller ID is spoofed to make it look very similar to my own number and so I automatically think that it is a colleague trying to ring me.  The problem is that I can’t block these numbers because it probably is a legitimate number used by a colleague but obviously, it is not them making the nuisance calls. 

If this is allowed to continue unabated, I can very quickly see telephone calls becoming a thing of the past.

naedanger

Mickey666 said:

Ectophile said:

The problem is that the telephone companies in the UK aren't checking that caller ID numbers generated by customers are genuine. Anyone with a digital exchange on their premises can generate their own caller IDs, and there is nothing in place to check them.

OFCOM needs to stop being the feeble regulator, and start telling phone service providers that they are responsible for checking caller ID, and that they will be held responsible if fake caller IDs get on to the phone network.

Perhaps.  Once upon a time there was no caller ID but presumably someone thought it would be a good idea so it was introduced.  Now we're complaining because a relatively few people abuse it.  There's always the option to disable caller ID.

Having said that, in practice I'm not sure how spoofing a caller ID really helps to fool people, except to pretend they're calling from within the UK, because how many people would recognise a genuine HMRC or bank number anyway?

Caller id is a useful feature. The solution to it being abused is not to withdraw it but to prevent the abuse. As said by another poster Ofgem should act.

deannagone

I use a call blocker, a caller has to give their name before my phone rings me to give the name, then I decide whether to take the call.  I was getting several marketing/scam calls a day.  I might have had one or two since I got this phone. Unfortunately I do get scam texts and phone calls via my mobile.  

I agree, something needs to be done, it can cause the vulnerable so much anxiety and loss of much needed income.

Le_Kirk

naedanger said:

Caller id is a useful feature. The solution to it being abused is not to withdraw it but to prevent the abuse. As said by another poster Ofgem should act.

Or maybe even OFCOM!  Ofgem is the power (gas & electricity) supply regulator.

GDB2222

The OP says that something should be done to protect the vulnerable. Well, there is something that we all can do to protect the vulnerable. right now, without any change in technology.  Simply, answer the call, and engage the caller in a conversation, as lengthy as you can reasonably manage, and of course don't give out any true information - just be inventive. If everybody did this, the whole scamming operation would become uneconomic.

yellowbear

I'm now getting cold callers ringing to offer me a service to prevent cold callers ringing!  

ic

I can wholeheartedly recommend the range of phones with "Call Guardian" feature.  Its basically set to answer any unrecognised calls (i.e. new numbers, or withheld numbers) and will use a pre-recorded message to ask them to record their name.  They will then be placed on hold and your handsets will ring, and you'll be played their name and can decide whether to connect the call.  If you reject, another message will be played to them, and they'll be blocked from getting through in the future.  The beauty of the system is most cold callers won't bother to record a name and just hang up, so you don't even hear the phone ring.  You can easily build the phone book so that friends and family get through without the need to go through recording their name.

My grandmother with dementia had no chance of understanding the "PA" system above, so I configured it to just reject all unrecognised callers - legit or otherwise.  The only people that could call her were family, her doctors and her hair dresser.  It made the calls about anti-virus, insulation and boilers disappear instantly.

Carrot007

ic said:

I can wholeheartedly recommend the range of phones with "Call Guardian" feature.  Its basically set to answer any unrecognised calls (i.e. new numbers, or withheld numbers) and will use a pre-recorded message to ask them to record their name.  They will then be placed on hold and your handsets will ring, and you'll be played their name and can decide whether to connect the call.  If you reject, another message will be played to them, and they'll be blocked from getting through in the future.  The beauty of the system is most cold callers won't bother to record a name and just hang up, so you don't even hear the phone ring.  You can easily build the phone book so that friends and family get through without the need to go through recording their name.

Will only stop automated calls, some scams are still real people. Though they may decide not to continue, but IMO they really should as they will get people more likely to be scammed (not saying it's good! just offering the opinion of what they would do if they were smart).

And the blocking part does not work as they never call from the same number twice, it is randomly generated, often a local number or one similar to yours to encourage pick up. So you may end up blocking legitimate calls that have been used in the fake ID. Blocking serves no purpose except blocking annoying relatives these days ;-)

Sandtree

dickibobboy said:

Later that day i blocked my caller ID and called each number back, 2 people answered and had no idea what i was talking about. They’re either very good at spoofing or something else is going off!

Its the caller ID that is spoofed... with the right software/kit/relationships you can set the caller ID to be whatever you want it to be. Depending on what the scam is there are clearly different strategies that may work better than others... claim to be calling from HSBC then use a HSBC telephone number. Random spammer/phishing etc then make it appear a local number to the person you're calling. All tricks to get you to answer.

Its decades ago that phones had a single immutable telephone number and in most cases this is helpful... all the banking and insurance staff working from come can call customers and it'll appear as the banks/insurers telephone number. I've got a couple of phone numbers set to my system (all of which I legally own) such as one in the USA for my clients over there who seem to always struggle doing international phone calls but dont need to now I have a number over there.

I struggle to see any way any regulator could ultimately block it all unless there was a global effort and lets be honest, if we could get the world working together to solve a single problem there are bigger issues to solve than callerID spoofing.