It happens... often. Mobile phone and landline, business phone and personal. The number looks legitimate, perhaps even the area code and prefix appear to be local - you answer the call only to be met with silence, a robocall or the unmistakable sounds of a call center. Welcome to Spoofing or, in the case of spam calls spoofed to look like a local or familiar number - Local Call Spam or Neighbor Spoofing.

Caller ID spoofing used to require an advanced knowledge of telephony equipment which could be quite expensive. However, with the popularity of VoIP phones and availability of open source software any one can spoof calls with minimal costs and effort. There are even spoofing services, where customers pay in advance to receive a PIN number - which is used along with the desired destination number and the number they wish to appear on a caller id. The call is then transferred with the spoofed number chosen by the third party.

According to the 2017 Call Fraud Report from Pindrop, there has been a 113% increase in fraudulent calls within the past year, with more than 46% of phone calls in the United States being spam. Active phone lines are valuable to scammers, so answering a spoofed call can often result in opening your line to even more spam calls. The problem has gotten so big that earlier this month, the FCC filed a complaint in federal district court seeking to stop two related operations that allegedly facilitated billions of illegal robocalls nationwide.

Scammers can use numbers from the local police department, bank or any other reputable business so you think you're talking to a legitimate representative - hoping they can trick you into giving away valuable personal information so it can be used in fraudulent activity or sold illegally. Common scams include:

Credit Card Rate Reduction: You are promised a reduction in your credit card interest rates for an upfront fee and confirmation of your personal information, which can then be used for identity theft.

Prize Notification: From "free" home security systems to week long cruises that require your credit card information for a small "processing fee."

Microsoft Tech Support: The caller claims you have a virus on your computer and they need access to your machine to fix it.

Tax Scams: Posing as the IRS, scammers demand a prepaid card for taxes you owe or claiming you have a refund and requiring personal information to confirm.

Auto Insurance: Offering you a lower rate, once you disclose your personal information.

National Do Not Call Registry: Emails and calls from posing as someone from FTC (Federal Trade Commission) advising that your registration on the National Do Not Call Registry is about to expire. Registrations never expire.

PROTECTING YOUR LANDLINE no caller id calls  SPOOFED CALLS

In addition to the National Do Not Call Registry, in November of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted new rules allowing phone companies to proactively block illegal calls that are likely to be fraudulent. Since then, many of the major telephone companies provide resources to help consumers block or filter annoying calls: