Telemarketing companies can now call you from your own number

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Telephone marketing companies have come up with a new trick to get people to answer their calls.

The trick is to substitute a caller ID, which allows telemerketing companies to fake the number that is displayed on the screen of the phone they are calling, writes Chicago Tribune.

One of the most popular tricks associated with this technology is to spoof the number of the user they are calling, to do this, telemarketing organizations copy the area code of the called party, and sometimes even the first few digits of their number.

Even the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates telephone lines and telemarketing, Ajit Pye fell victim to a telemarketing call made using a new tactic.

He admitted that he answered the call, because he thought it might be someone from the office, because the codes of the region and territory coincided.

Joel Whalen, a professor of marketing and business communications at DePaula University, believes that number spoofing technology will make users more susceptible to telemarketing.

“The person will answer the call and be engaged in the conversation, this will overcome the main obstacle that telemarketing faces, which is getting someone to answer the call so they can start a conversation,” Whalen said.

Extensive use of caller ID substitution by telemarketing companies and fraudsters is possible due to the availability in public access of a large number of Internet programs for number substitution, as well as other services that can be used for this purpose. The practice of number substitution is not in itself illegal: according to the 2009 subscriber ID law, the manipulation of the caller ID substitution is prohibited only if the caller’s goal is to “cheat, harm or improperly receive something from the called subscriber valuable. "

Substitution can also be used for good purposes. It can be used by shelters for victims of domestic violence who do not want their phone number to be public and easily found by people from whom they are trying to protect the shelter residents. Law enforcement can use it to gather information. Doctors can communicate with patients from their personal phone and use the service of number substitution, so that the call allegedly goes from the number of their office, which is known to patients.

There are several ways to avoid unwanted calls. One is to check with your phone service provider to see how you can block calls from certain numbers. However, this method may be useless if spoofing technology is used, since telemarketing companies are able to create an almost infinite number of combinations of different numbers through this trick.

You can also enter your number in the register of the Federal Trade Commission Do not call. It does not give 100% guarantee that you will not receive promotional calls, because fraudsters do not pay attention to this list, but the number of telemarketing calls will noticeably decrease.

After receiving a significant number of complaints from users, the Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules to protect subscribers from new technology, which, among other things, allow telephone companies to completely block calls from fake numbers if they are illegal.

The FCC also monitors and penalizes subscribers for illegal number substitution. For example, on August 3, the FCC imposed a fine of 82 million dollars on a telemarketing company selling health insurance that used fake phone numbers to make calls.

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