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Caller (fake) ID
8 commentsLast week I learned about a scam I didn’t know about before. In an a Newsday article, "Authorities: Scam steals ID, then cards" by Rocco Parascandola, I read that apparently, thieves are now able to cloak their phone numbers when they initiate phone calls just by using a spoof card. When the person receiving the telephone call checks his Caller ID, he’ll see not the true originating number, but a spoofed one. With a spoof card (available on the Internet) thieves can display any phone number they want.
Here’s where the thieves have become really crafty. They’ve used the cards to make phone calls to credit card companies to activate credit cards. When we’re issued new cards via the mail, consumers are instructed to telephone our credit card issuers from our home telephones – ostensibly so that they can “verify” that we are who we say we are. There goes that theory.
Thieves have already been quite successful with this fraud, getting credit cards activated and in some cases even making small payments on card balances so that they can increases in credit limits of the card.
From what I’ve heard, the cards are not illegal (yet). I’m assuming and hoping they will be soon. Or else, we’ll just have to go back to the days before Caller ID. I hope that doesn’t mean we have to start dealing with all sorts of juvenile prank calls – or worse. What a waste of what most of us consider a convenient, useful innovation.
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