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

JJ_Egan

A call blocker with a Whitelist blocks all my scam calls .

Ectophile

Sandtree said:

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.

There is no way that an international call should ever have a UK number.  Anyone trying that should be blocked at the point of entry to the UK.

If they are using a UK provider, via VOIP, then the UK provider should be responsible for generating genuine phone numbers.

Sandtree

Ectophile said:
There is no way that an international call should ever have a UK number.  Anyone trying that should be blocked at the point of entry to the UK.

If they are using a UK provider, via VOIP, then the UK provider should be responsible for generating genuine phone numbers.

So you want your bank to appear on your phone as a call from India, South Africa or wherever their call centre is? You do realise that when you go on holiday overseas with your mobile you still use the same UK number no? Are you saying your mobile should stop working whilst you are abroad then @Ectophile because its allowing an overseas caller to have a UK number?

Secondly, how will anyone know where a voip call is originating from? When last on holiday I would VPN into my home network and call using my VOIP. My VOIP provider would have seen the connection coming from my home IP despite the fact I was in a different country. Are you saying I shouldnt have been able to make that call? Do you think your mobile gets a different number when you are abroad? There are millions of services out there that will act as proxies to make it appear your request is originating within a different local than your IP would otherwise suggest.

This only considers the matter of a hosted VOIP solution. PSTN gateways are hardware that can be bought and setup 

chrisw

Carrot007 said:

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 ;-)

I was given a Truecall call blocker a few years ago by Trading Standards as part of some trial which I've kept since and it's brilliant.

It allows through known numbers but unknown numbers get a message 'if you are a friend please press 5 to connect, if you are a cold caller please hang up'. I was sceptical thinking the cold callers would just press 5 but I'm amazed that not a single one ever has. The doctor and district nurses have pressed 5 and that's great.

I unplug it now and again when I'm bored to wind up the callers much to my wife's annoyance.

NaughtiusMaximus

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?

That's a big part of it, also generating numerous and ever changing fake caller IDs is way of getting around mobile call blocking apps.

littleboo

Ectophile said:

Sandtree said:

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.

There is no way that an international call should ever have a UK number.  Anyone trying that should be blocked at the point of entry to the UK.

If they are using a UK provider, via VOIP, then the UK provider should be responsible for generating genuine phone numbers.

The cheap override providers certainly used to, in some circumstances, route calls UK calls via international trunks. But as already mentioned, VOIP and mobile roaming largely negates the concept of a number being linked to a location.

Ectophile

Sandtree said:

Ectophile said:
There is no way that an international call should ever have a UK number.  Anyone trying that should be blocked at the point of entry to the UK.

If they are using a UK provider, via VOIP, then the UK provider should be responsible for generating genuine phone numbers.

So you want your bank to appear on your phone as a call from India, South Africa or wherever their call centre is? You do realise that when you go on holiday overseas with your mobile you still use the same UK number no? Are you saying your mobile should stop working whilst you are abroad then @Ectophile because its allowing an overseas caller to have a UK number?

Secondly, how will anyone know where a voip call is originating from? When last on holiday I would VPN into my home network and call using my VOIP. My VOIP provider would have seen the connection coming from my home IP despite the fact I was in a different country. Are you saying I shouldnt have been able to make that call? Do you think your mobile gets a different number when you are abroad? There are millions of services out there that will act as proxies to make it appear your request is originating within a different local than your IP would otherwise suggest.

This only considers the matter of a hosted VOIP solution. PSTN gateways are hardware that can be bought and setup 

If your mobile supplier can bill you correctly when you're roaming overseas, then they can check your phone number too.  That should be a solvable problem.

If the banks want to use overseas call centres, and require them to use plain telephone lines, then that's their problem.  The caller ID should either be genuine or just "international".  If they use VOIP between the overseas call centre and a UK base, then they can apply the correct number on exit to the phone network.

When I first got caller ID, it was quite common to see calls marked as "unknown" or "international", instead of showing a number.  Surely it can't be that hard to remove the caller ID from suspect calls.

Bogus caller ID is becoming a serious problem.  We don't need excuses that it's too hard to fix - we need solutions.

GSDMum

@Ectophile Bogus caller ID is becoming a serious problem.  We don't need excuses that it's too hard to fix - we need solutions.

Exactly! This should be a given.

fenwick458

Money_Grabber13579 said:

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

correct. It's already happening. I'm self employed so I have my phone number on the internet, this means I receive dozens of spam calls every day. loads of them are just from a mobile number or sometimes a local number,  and as a result I don't bother answering a new mobile number that I don't have saved. loads of customers have commented on how they couldn't get through to me on the phone after days of trying yet after sending an e-mail I replied in a few hours it was easy to set up the job up.
but also, I don't bother answering any phone calls at all now, even if I have the number saved. is that not just how things are going? My phone has been on silent for 2 years... I'd just prefer it if I got a message, or a voicemail and i'll get back to them...

Sandtree

Ectophile said:

Sandtree said:

Ectophile said:
There is no way that an international call should ever have a UK number.  Anyone trying that should be blocked at the point of entry to the UK.

If they are using a UK provider, via VOIP, then the UK provider should be responsible for generating genuine phone numbers.

So you want your bank to appear on your phone as a call from India, South Africa or wherever their call centre is? You do realise that when you go on holiday overseas with your mobile you still use the same UK number no? Are you saying your mobile should stop working whilst you are abroad then @Ectophile because its allowing an overseas caller to have a UK number?

Secondly, how will anyone know where a voip call is originating from? When last on holiday I would VPN into my home network and call using my VOIP. My VOIP provider would have seen the connection coming from my home IP despite the fact I was in a different country. Are you saying I shouldnt have been able to make that call? Do you think your mobile gets a different number when you are abroad? There are millions of services out there that will act as proxies to make it appear your request is originating within a different local than your IP would otherwise suggest.

This only considers the matter of a hosted VOIP solution. PSTN gateways are hardware that can be bought and setup 

If your mobile supplier can bill you correctly when you're roaming overseas, then they can check your phone number too.  That should be a solvable problem.

If the banks want to use overseas call centres, and require them to use plain telephone lines, then that's their problem.  The caller ID should either be genuine or just "international".  If they use VOIP between the overseas call centre and a UK base, then they can apply the correct number on exit to the phone network.

When I first got caller ID, it was quite common to see calls marked as "unknown" or "international", instead of showing a number.  Surely it can't be that hard to remove the caller ID from suspect calls.

Bogus caller ID is becoming a serious problem.  We don't need excuses that it's too hard to fix - we need solutions.

So you are saying its ok for you to display a UK number whilst you are overseas but not ok for others to? Bit of double standards there!! In almost all cases I would say everyone is being billed correctly when other phone systems are calling from somewhere other than their caller ID too and therefore by your excuse that means its all fair play.

Whats the "correct number on exit to the phone network"???? That makes no sense at all. And I am sure you are aware that even the likes of BT these days are using VOIP as part of the core infrastructure so even a PSTN to PSTN call probably goes via VOIP.

20 years ago absolutely most call centres in the UK showed up as an unknown number, connection to family overseas was more difficult with calls being echoy or lagged etc. Technology has moved on thankfully and now you can FaceTime your cousin in Australia for free rather than £3/minute with a 10 second lag. A small side effect of technology moving on, along with behaviours, is that a minority leverage that technology for negative motives.

Rather than whining about excuses it would be better to come up with real world workable solutions. Unfortunately I suspect there will also be whining when its decided only UK originated calls can have UK numbers and so you cannot use your mobile abroad any more.