Comment by hollerith

4 months ago

Even if you recognized it, the number shown by Caller ID is easy for the caller to spoof -- or at least it was a few years ago (the last time I paid attention).

Thankfully that part has vastly improved with STIR/SHAKEN, combined with number reputation management.

  • The problem with that, at least on my experience with iPhone, is you can only get the authentication signal after you’ve already hung up. The only thing I see is a small checkmark next to the “location” of the call in my recent call log. I can’t find any indication of a stir/shaken status in the active call screen.

    So asking people to take the step to confirm the call is legitimate won’t work- they can’t tell until they’ve already terminated the call. It’s useless for purpose imo.

    • On my Pixel some calls just get auto-rejected. Others will get through but be marked with a red caution symbol for the picture and say "Scam Likely". Then finally sometimes the call will come through with just the number but still have that red caution symbol.

      I imagine it is doing something with STIR/SHAKEN along with how many other times similar calls have been flagged as spam calls.

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I remember when I used Ting, I could specify what would appear as caller id. If I had wanted to abuse this, I could easily have had it display whatever number I wanted instead of my name. Since a number of phones would display the caller id instead of the number when caller id was available, nobody would know that the number was not real. I am not sure if this has changed at all.