Dave from Sheho was very confused on Tuesday morning. I was also confused on Tuesday morning, because I had just called Dave. His number was on my phone, I had accidentally dropped it while answering and managed to hang up, so I called back to see who it was. The number listed was local at least, so even if I didn’t recognize it there was a good possibility that there was someone I knew on the other end.
What actually happened was something called Caller ID Spoofing, where false caller ID information is sent to a phone in order to get people to answer it. It was an inevitable development, caller ID has been the bane of telemarketers since its inception, as people tend to ignore calls with an unfamiliar area code. Of course, a legitimate business can’t do this, CRTC rules prohibit telemarketers from hiding or spoofing the number, so whoever was pretending they were Dave was likely not a legitimate business. Of course, in this instance I also can’t make a complaint, because I didn’t actually answer and thus don’t have any information on who was attempting the call. All I know for certain was that the number was faked, and that the person who actually owns that number was completely blameless. Dave just happened to be there by pure coincidence.
There have been attempts to get rid of these scam calls for years, whether we’re talking about a do not call list or systems for reporting calls that read as not legitimate. The problem is that this only affects companies that play by the rules, rather than the operations that are going to ignore them anyway. If one were to try to report this company based on the information I have, it would be impossible to get results. I don’t know who they are or what they were trying to sell, because I didn’t answer the phone. I don’t know where they were calling from, because the number was a lie. I only know that they were breaking the rules, but given that it’s impossible to find them how do I prove it?
The only solution would be to find a way to prevent caller ID spoofing as a whole, but then you run into technical problems. Would it be possible to actually wipe it out while still using the phones currently out in the world? You also have the issue of businesses and organizations which have a legitimate reason to put an alternate number on phone displays. Any business with a large number of outgoing lines would want to have a single number listed as their phone number, so people know who is calling and, more importantly, the best place to call back. It’s only the scam artists who want to prevent you from getting back to them.
In a way, we are stuck with this problem. There’s nothing anyone can do to make sure our numbers aren’t used – it’s most likely generating random numbers behind a familiar area code. We could always try to catch them, but it would require making a great deal of effort to ascertain any real information on the people behind the con, since they’re not going to give you any concrete, legitimate information. In effect, all we can do is be aware that this is a problem that exists and one that we have to be aware of when answering a call from any unfamiliar number. Just remember that it might be a local number, but the person might be innocent here.
