I need to know if any of you have heard of this before.
It's a situation where someone uses a prepaid phone card, internet dials, or uses a * program to dial a number as well as dial in what they want the caller ID to list for the receiver.
Apparently, this has been going on for years. And it's not illegal?
My husband has had this going on for a few weeks now. He just gets angrier every time it happens, because the recipient will call him back and ream him out for the horrible call they just received.
Once it was a handicapped woman who had been dialed several times and was getting harassed. Today it was someone who was cursed out and harassed.
The Cingular representative he spoke to said they had never heard of such a thing, but then I decided to Google it and see what we found. It is unbelievable. There are several websites out there selling the phone cards and ability to use this service.
So we have to change his phone number. Now that this has happened so many times and it isn't stopping, we've decided to get it changed. It has never happened to me, so I imagine someone just swiped his number and is fond of using it.
Have you heard of this? Do you know anyone that this has happened to or has done this before? Because it seems like it should be illegal. It's harassment and it is only used for pranks or for telemarketing-type purposes. Not to mention it's technically a form of identity theft.
What is this world coming to...
1 comment:
Apparently Verizon has never heard of this either nor has my local police department (in a city with a population of over 200,000). I am being harassed by an individual that is using this method to "call from" numerous bogus phone numbers. I refuse to change my phone number because I have had it for several years and Verizon says they can't do anything about the harassment other than change my phone number. So yes, I have heard of this. There is a bill against caller ID spoofing but as far as I can tell it only outlaws caller ID spoofing when it is used in connection with fraud. The FCC needs to step in and create a "Do Not Call / Do Not Use" list for caller ID spoofing services.
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