I have a foreign phone number, and live in another country so I don’t deal with it. I don’t understand why it’s such a huge problem in America all of a sudden.
In: Technology
Computer dialers that often fake their caller ID # to make it look like a local call. Once the connection is made it could be a computer recording played back or it patches in a human in a call center. The recent surge is from foreign countries where they found it easy to make money off of the .01% that fall for it. It’s a numbers game. It is often from countries where it is difficult to or impossible to prosecute.
The latest trick is dialing once and hanging up, doing this multiple times until you call back. The number you dial is a super expensive toll number they bill you for. Some are social engineering to get personal info for ID theft. India got infamous for fake PC repair call centers out to get full access to everything on your computer.
The big telecoms are pretty bad at stopping it. They are in business for profit. There are so many cases and it is difficult to prosecute and that all costs money. They can block numbers, and put up the equivalent of spam filters, but it’s easy for the dialers to change location and start again. Until there is a monetary incentive for them to police it better, it will continue.
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