DON’T LET
ROBO CA Steal Your Season!
WRITTEN BY RICK COBELLO, PRESIDENT GLOBAL CYBERSECURITY SOLUTIONS LLC
How many times have you received a call about an extended warranty that you don’t have or that free Marriott vacation? This time of year, it is especially important to be vigilant due to tax filing time. Many scams exist during the tax period. “Robo calls are the greatest consumer complaint to the FCC with over 200,000 complaints each year—around 60 percent of all the complaints we receive. Some private analysts estimate that U.S. consumers received nearly 4 billion robocalls per month in 2018. Unfortunately, advancements in technology make it cheap and easy to make massive numbers of robocalls and to "spoof" caller ID information to hide a caller's true identity.” (Federal Communications Commission) SPOOFING — WHAT IS IT? Spoofing is a method used by both legitimate and illegitimate parties to make it seem as if a phone call is coming from a certain number when it’s actually coming from somewhere else. For businesses, spoofing can be a practical and necessary activity… EXAMPLES OF LEGAL SPOOFING Spoofing is usually legal when the person making the call has the legal right to use the spoofed number, even when calling from a different number. Examples of legal spoofing include: • contractors hired by a company to make calls can spoof by displaying their client’s business number on the caller ID instead of the telemarketers’ own phone number. • A business with a toll-free number may spoof by displaying their toll-free number on the caller ID instead of the internal line. • As a professional, you have the legal freedom to spoof your office number when making business calls from your personal device. Calls like you usually get from your doctor. 38 | SARATOGA FAMILY | FALL 2021
ILLEGAL SPOOFING IS EASIER TO DETECT. Spoofing is almost always illegal when the spoofer doesn’t have legal rights to the number being impersonated. A few examples of illegal spoofing include: • Deception: This is when the caller spoofs with the goal of hiding their real number and they don’t care which number they use for the spoof. • Impersonation: This is when the caller intentionally spoofs a believable number that the receiver will be more likely to pick-up or trust. • Neighborhood Spoofing: Neighborhood spoofing is similar to impersonation, but imposters attempt to mimic a number from a local company or individual. WHAT CAN YOU DO? • Don't answer calls from unknown numbers. If you answer such a call, hang up immediately. • You may not be able to tell right away if an incoming call is spoofed. Be aware: Caller ID showing a "local" number does not necessarily mean it is a local caller. • If you answer the phone and the caller - or a recording - asks you to hit a button to stop getting the calls, you should just hang up. Scammers often use this trick to identify potential targets. saratogaTODAYnewspaper.com
