Scam from jerks claiming to be Apple CS

[purplepeacock186]

These scammers have been around for ages. I have heard about them at least since 2 or 3 years ago. People should be aware of them now. I have just Googled about this Apple scam and found some reports have been filed since last year at https://www.whycall.me/800-100-9009.html. Be on extra guard and keep spreading the word to family.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I really don’t understand how they can spoof our own land line number (or any number for that matter). Caller ID implementation seems stuck in the 1980s.

There are several valid situations where caller id needs to show a number different than the one the call was made from. So they can't just shut all "spoofing" down across the board. I agree, though, that there's no reason (technologically-speaking) why it couldn't be handled in such a way that people using the feature for nefarious purposes would be shut down.

I for one, believe that there should be a away for residential customers to choose to reject direct calls that originate in another country.

A screening telephone system has made my land-line much more user friendly again. White-listed contacts ring through with no issue, black-listed numbers are dropped with no ring, and unknown callers don't start ringing until they record their name and push the pound key. And I can easily white-list/drop/black-list with the touch of a button. My phone is getting hundreds of calls a week, but it almost never rings unless it's someone I actually want to speak to.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

There are several valid situations where caller id needs to show a number different than the one the call was made from. So they can't just shut all "spoofing" down across the board. I agree, though, that there's no reason (technologically-speaking) why it couldn't be handled in such a way that people using the feature for nefarious purposes would be shut down.

I for one, believe that there should be a away for residential customers to choose to reject direct calls that originate in another country.

A screening telephone system has made my land-line much more user friendly again. White-listed contacts ring through with no issue, black-listed numbers are dropped with no ring, and unknown callers don't start ringing until they record their name and push the pound key. And I can easily white-list/drop/black-list with the touch of a button. My phone is getting hundreds of calls a week, but it almost never rings unless it's someone I actually want to speak to.

Simply put, the caller id information is included in the call record and is put there by the originating switch. For companies that have their own PBX, the caller id information is supplied by the PBX. Scammers generally hid behind a PBX, of course most companies do the same.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Simply put, the caller id information is included in the call record and is put there by the originating switch. For companies that have their own PBX, the caller id information is supplied by the PBX. Scammers generally hid behind a PBX, of course most companies do the same.

Exactly. That's why it can't just be shut down altogether. But there's no reason (technologically) that they can't be stopped from supplying caller id numbers that include area codes and exchanges that they're not actually responsible for.

I make all of our outgoing calls from various numbers spoof the main number of our business for caller id purposes. All calls look like they originated from our main business number. But all those other numbers that are spoofing our main number are still under our control. And our service provider KNOWS this.

There's no reason telco's can't reject calls that are providing caller id info for numbers they don't own/lease/control. It wouldn't be difficult for software to verify that the actual number and the spoofed caller id number are in fact both controlled/owned/leased by the same entities.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Exactly. That's why it can't just be shut down altogether. But there's no reason (technologically) that they can't be stopped from supplying caller id numbers that include area codes and exchanges that they're not actually responsible for.

I make all of our outgoing calls from various numbers spoof the main number of our business for caller id purposes. All calls look like they originated from our main business number. But all those other numbers that are spoofing our main number are still under our control. And our service provider KNOWS this.

There's no reason telco's can't reject calls that are providing caller id info for numbers they don't own/lease/control. It wouldn't be difficult for software to verify that the actual number and the spoofed caller id number are in fact both controlled/owned/leased by the same entities.

I would suggest that most of those scam calls are from PBX's based outside the US. In my various jobs working as a developer for large telecommunications companies I've work both fraud and billing (i.e. working with the call records). I've also done some switch programming. On the surface it seems simple, but when you are working with calls that are international, or are coming from some small mom and pop telecom with a 30 year old MTSO, the details get pretty complex pretty quickly.

A telephone company rejecting a call because of caller id info is seriously not an option. Most telephone companies are heavily regulated and were even more regulated 20 years ago. Telephone companies seriously don't want to explain why the call to the police department didn't go through because the caller id information was not valid. For that matter, law enforcement agencies don't want telephone companies to reject spoofed caller id, mostly because they use that particular feature rather heavily.

[DiapDealer]

I understand they may not want to reject calls. But that's simply not an option in this day and age. Something WILL change soon, and telcos will have to adjust. Even if it's just providing the end-user with the option to have more granularity in choosing what they want to reject. The notion that today's telcos couldn't prevent overseas fraud-farms from spoofing phone numbers local to their targets just isn't realistic. They can already do it. They just haven't figured out the best way to sell it as a feature to the end-user.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I understand they may not want to reject calls. But that's simply not an option in this day and age. Something WILL change soon, and telcos will have to adjust. Even if it's just providing the end-user with the option to have more granularity in choosing what they want to reject. The notion that today's telcos couldn't prevent overseas fraud-farms from spoofing phone numbers local to their targets just isn't realistic. They can already do it. They just haven't figured out the best way to sell it as a feature to the end-user.

International telephone calls work because of interconnecting treaties and agreements in place between countries. There are a few bad actor foreign telephone companies out there, but it mostly works. Back when the 1-800 spoof scam (you call a 1-800 number which forwards you to a 1-900 number in a different country) was popular, I got a pretty good education on why telephone companies couldn't spot the scam and refuse to pay the foreign telephone company. The basic answer is legally they can't.

As far as interactive fraud detection goes, that stuff is mostly after the fact. The sheer volume of calls makes real time detection much more difficult than you think. Heck, real time call rating (which is what makes pre-paid mobile telephone possible) is both expensive and hard. It took years of work and many millions of dollars to get it to working in a timely manner at the company where I worked. Yea, it's possible to put in an anti-call-spoofer system in place, but it's both expensive and runs into legal issues.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

This seems very unlikely to me. Can you please elaborate on how my landline number might be "hacked"? Without hacking my landline provider's system, just how would they change where my number is being forwarded to? And how would turning off call forwarding on my landline prevent someone who later hacks my landline account (or my landline provider's system) from re-enabling call-forwarding and doing whatever they want anyway? And what kind of accounts are vulnerable to being "stolen from" with just a phone number? Even to get the second token of a 2FA protected account forwarded to someone's smart phone from a hacked landline, they'd need to crack the first password.

I'm all for being safer with your data, but your scenario doesn't sound that probable to me. I just don't believe anyone is more (or less) at risk by having their landline forwarded.

You're better off realizing (and spreading the word) that companies such as Apple and Microsoft simply don't cold-call people to avoid this kind of scam.

This actually happened to me. The provider was Frontier (formerly Verizon FIOS). How the hacker(s) got onto the Frontier system, I do not know. Once they got to my system, they used call forwarding to forward my phone number to their own smart phone (number). Then they attacked one of my retirement accounts at a big name discount brokerage. They first changed the email address to a "burner" email address of their own, and then tried to drain the account. The only thing that stopped them was the fact that they tried to pull out all the money almost immediately. That trigger the anti-fraud systems at the brokerage company (the last line of defence). I didn't know about the brokerage attack only when I received a paper "snail mail" notification.

My guess is that is came from a resume', I had sent out. (I was job hunting at the time.)

This was a very real occurrence. I checked with Frontier, and they immediately advised turning off call forwarding.

[Greg Anos]

Yes, it's a logical "blind spot". How many land line users treat a system that is not normally thought of as part of a computer system, as a computer system subject to hacking?

I have since "hardened" all my financial accounts, with analog interlocks.

(Some system here. I can't edit a post after 5 minutes I add the rest as a quick post, which doesn't show up. So I have to add another post to the thread. Shrug.)