I remember in very recent years reading about potential new measures in Ireland to try stop the flood of spam & phishing calls and texts. It sounded promising and long overdue but it doesn’t seem to have been implemented yet or if it has it’s not really working. In the last few months I and others I know have been getting spam calls from legit numbers. That is to say, scammers are masking their true numbers by cloaking them with legitimate personal and business numbers. This is called “Calling Line Identification (CLI) spoofing”. So if you see an unrecognized number calling or texting you but you google the number and it leads to a real, legitimate business, or sometimes the business or persons name is actually shown on your screen then you can be left thinking it was a legitimate call. And if you call the number back you’ll actually reach the real person/company!
What the scammers want you to do is answer the initial call then they can try get your personal details and do what they do. Obviously this is a level above the usual scam calls because it appears to be far more trustworthy than the usual foreign or unknown number and it even caught me off guard a bit and I consider myself very scam aware. I replied to one missed UK number by text last week thinking it was a business proposal! I got no reply but the person probably thought I was a scammer too!
So what the hell are we supposed to do? Well hopefully the mobile operators will figure out a way of blocking calls to people from numbers that mask other numbers but until that happens, just ask yourself does a call from someone like a legitimate UK humanist (as in my case) make any logical sense and if you’re in any doubt, just let it ring out then text back. Chances are they will say they didn’t ring you then you’ll both know it’s a scam. If you’re a business or organisation you can also make sure your Sender ID is registered on the ComReg registry HERE. Unregistered business numbers will soon be blocked from sending apparently.
Here’s some more info on Scam Calls & Texts from ComReg – Comreg.ie/advice-information/scam-calls/
