And the Epidemic Continues

Picture this scenario (and just for the sake of argument, you have a sister who’s a member of this credit union): She gets a call one morning supposedly from the Call Center. At least that’s what the Caller ID says on her cell phone. The Call Center Representative says that we’re doing an important upgrade and need to verify her account number, social security number, PINs and all that jazz. At first, your sister is a little hesitant to give the information since we’ve told our members time and time again that we’d never ask for that type of information over the phone. However, since it plainly reads on the Caller ID that it’s our credit union, this call must be legit, right? Wrong.

 

Ever hear of a thing called, Caller ID Spoofing? Apparently it’s not the newest form of identity theft but, in my opinion, it’s one of the most deceitful forms I’ve heard to date. It was actually very unsettling to think that someone could pretend to be someone you know and trust just to fraud you. These crooks can even change their voices from male to female or vice versa. Can you imagine? Someone can just walk to a payphone, spoof the number they’re calling, get all the information they need and clean you out of house and home. Or, a criminal could find a lost cell phone at a restaurant, use it to do malicious acts and in the end, law enforcement will point to that poor guy or gal who innocently left his/her cell phone at the restaurant and out of nowhere be arrested for something he/she had no idea about.

 

Many people, including myself, do not realize that Caller ID Spoofing has been around since Caller ID was created. We’re talking over a decade here. Caller ID Spoofing was used mainly by businesses with access to expensive PRI (Primary Rate Interface) telephone lines provided by local telephone carriers. A single PRI line provided businesses with up to 23 telephone lines and all of these lines are capable of having unique telephone numbers. Caller ID Spoofing, in its most basic form, was typically used by businesses to display one main telephone number on all outgoing calls, even though those calls were not really originating from those numbers. Criminals obviously caught on to this method and used it to their advantage.

 

 As Frank Mulchay, Identity Theft Risk Specialist and speaker at last night’s Chapter Dinner said, criminals are just sitting around thinking of ways to steal your identity.

 

So what’s a person to do? If for any reason you’re suspicious about a call and think you’re being “spoofed”, tell this person you’ll call them back. No questions asked. If they’re legit, there should be no qualms about you trying to verify the call.

 

Identity theft is becoming an epidemic. One wonders how far this will go?