‘Stop Robocalling Me!’; ‘I Didn’t!’
‘Stop Robocalling Me!’; ‘I Didn’t!’
Robocall recipients lash out, unaware that numbers on the
other end may have been ‘spoofed’ by scammers
By Sarah Krouse Updated Dec. 31, 2018 1:09 p.m. ET
Jeffrey Lewis Knapp saves the four to six telephone
numbers his caller ID logs each day. At night he seeks his revenge, calling
back the people he thinks are illegal robocallers. “How can I help you?” the
Arizona-based retiree says he asks the people who answer.
The problem with Mr. Knapp’s approach: He sometimes calls
people who didn’t, in fact, call him first. Instead, the individuals he calls
are themselves victims of a phone-related crime called malicious number
spoofing, in which callers falsify their number to disguise their identities.
“A lot of times they don’t know that their number was
used,” said Mr. Knapp, 66. “I had one guy get a little irritated and hung up,
but most are pretty positive.”
Americans’ growing battle against illegal robocallers has
reached a boiling point, with victims of one form of phone-related malfeasance
now lashing out at those impacted by a different form of it.
Hiya, one of many mobile phone applications with
call-blocking features, estimates that there were 8 billion robocalls to U.S.
cellphones in the final quarter of 2018, up from about 5 billion in the first
quarter.
Many illegal robocalls use number spoofing to obscure
their identities. The practice allows bad actors to display to recipients
numbers that aren’t actually the ones they are calling from.
Meir Cohen, chief executive of TelTech Systems Inc.,
which sells an unwanted-call blocking app called RoboKiller, said phone numbers
are often misused when robocallers deliberately generate numbers that appear to
be in the same area code as the recipient. It is meant to lead victims to
believe the call is legitimate and answer their phone.
Web-based calling technology makes it easy for
robocallers to display a randomly generated number. The phone numbers spoofed,
however, may belong to a real person or business that is unaware that the
number is being used that way.
There is no fail-safe way for consumers to keep their
numbers from being spoofed and even changing numbers won’t guarantee that the
problem will go away, robocall prevention specialists say.
The Federal Communications Commission has said that
combating illegal robocalls and malicious phone-number spoofing is its top
consumer protection priority and that consumers and businesses impacted by the
problem can file a complaint with the agency or record a voice-mail message
that says they don’t make marketing calls.
But clamping down on spoofing is difficult.
“A lot of spoofing can happen overseas and when it
happens from overseas it can be very difficult to trace the origins of a call,”
said Christine Reilly, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, who works
with companies on compliance with consumer protection laws.
There are also legitimate uses of spoofing, which makes
an outright ban on such technology problematic.
A doctor who wants to call patients back from her
cellphone may want to spoof her office number to avoid giving out personal
contact information. A domestic violence shelter, where privacy is paramount,
may similarly wish to disguise its number when it calls the home of a client.
The FCC has so far handed hefty penalties to bad actors
and allowed carriers to block calls from fake area codes as well as numbers
that aren’t used for outbound calls.
The agency in September proposed a $37.5 million fine
against a Tucson-based company for maliciously spoofing numbers in millions of
telemarketing calls over a period of 14 months starting in 2016. In that case,
at least one person in Arizona received more than five calls a day from people
complaining that she had called them when in fact the company had used her
number.
The telecommunications industry, meanwhile, is working on
a call-certifying protocol (known as STIR) as well as guidelines for
implementing it (known as SHAKEN) in the coming years. Under that system,
carriers on the originating end of a phone call would check to make sure that
the caller has the right to use a given number while the carrier on the
receiving end would certify that nothing had changed as the call was routed and
received.
Consumers will eventually see an indicator on their phone
signaling whether a call has been verified. If a bad actor spoofed a number,
that verification would not occur.
Efforts to stop phone-number abuse such as spoofing have
had a limited impact so far, with some victims of angry calls fearful for their
safety or finding themselves taking heat from strangers.
Angela Santiago changed her phone number of 20 years
after receiving an angry call from a woman accusing her of robocalling. After
doing so, however, the same thing happened with her new number.
“It’s a violation and a huge inconvenience,” Ms. Santiago
said.
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