spoofed local number robocalls

[vzw_customer_support]

That is a great question! When you receive unwanted calls such as these. This is usually due to your number being obtained by an email or website that you have provided your number to, or by a third party application that has shared this information. When you change your phone number. They will no longer have the same contact information for you, and would only be able to contact you again if you share the number once more. 

Alfredo_VZW

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[honestcustomer]

Hello Duke, thanks for sharing this.  I want to thank you because you inspired me to register for purposes of responding to this post.  I can confirm that not only what you are saying is 100% accurate, but based on my experiences as well as those of my friends and family who are Verizon customers, I can take it further and confirm this is a systemic Verizon issue that has been (perhaps unintentionally) seriously downplayed on this forum.

To understand, as is the case sometimes in life, you have to think in the most evil and nefarious manner possible to get to the bottom of what is going on. 

Let's examine this specific issue from 3 perspectives:  Criminal's, Carrier's (Verizon's), and Customer's (Ours):

Criminal perspective: - We want to discover some extremely valuable information to sell on the illegal markets - real, active, valid, working, mobile phone numbers.  These are a hot commodity - especially getting those numbers that are private and protected, that have not been provided anywhere we can access them.  So here is what we criminals will do - we will gain access to Verizon customers by using a little trick.  We will purchase prepaid cell phone numbers, or a similar anonymous method, to enter the Verizon "family".  We will then take note of the prefix on the number we get, i.e., if my new number is (415) 555-1234, my prefix is "555", and most likely, this is a Verizon wireless prefix, which means any numbers that start with this prefix are likely Verizon wireless numbers.  So, let's exploit this!

My goal is to discover new cell numbers, that's it.  I am not trying to sell anything to the owners of these numbers (yet); I just need to discover real Verizon numbers.  So, I set up an auto dialer, and I have it dial every single number within my prefix.  If the call goes to voicemail, or if someone picks up the phone, I know this is a real number.   So, my dialer calls 415-555-0000, then 415-555-0001, then 415-555-0002, etc., until I get flagged and blocked.

To give me enough time to hit all possible numbers, the process should start early in the week, on a weekday, so that by the time Verizon goes through their lengthy process of flagging it, I will have hopefully gone through the whole prefix, and when I am flagged, my prepaid account can be thrown away as I move on to the next one "anonymously". 

When it's all said and done, I will have a valuable list of active Verizon cell phone numbers, which I can turn around and sell on the illegal market. The cycle repeats.   I am just a criminal trying to make it in this world - who needs to troll Craiglist when I can just discover cell numbers using this method?  Verizon makes it so easy.

Carrier (Verizon) perspective:  This is a very tough one for us to tackle because we make a lot of money on our anonymous/prepaid program.  Revenue and profit are everything, and we have a system in place to stop these robocallers a few days after they strike, but not sooner; we cannot (at present) prevent them - this is not a priority for us.  So, it is in our best interest to downplay the significance of how bothersome this is, and to turn attention to other types of robocallers and scammers where we can place partial blame on costumers who provide their phone number to other channels - it's all about controlling the "narrative" - folks need to be smarter!

We want to ensure, as Verizon, that we do not publicly acknowledge our awareness of this prefix robocaller phenomena, as it would put more pressure on our company to come up with a viable solution - that is a burden and expense that we don't need to deal with, we're verizon, we have a slightly better signal, and that’s more important to people than being harassed.  We certainly do not want to appear behind other carriers, such as AT&T, who are likely more willing to tackle these nuisances, so it's best to just keep it hush hush.  So, to accomplish this, it's best to keep our ground staff ignorant of what's really happening, and ask them to stick to the script.  This is a business, and until robocallers hurt our bottom line, our prepaid program is more valuable than the harassment of our monthly subscribers.  (We would never say that so bluntly by the way.)

Customer perspective:   This is clearly an intentional and systemic issue.  It does not take rocket science to realize this since I get these calls several times a week, from numbers that look very similar to mine (same prefix), and since it happens to my family and friends who are on Verizon.  After doing a quick Google lookup, I realize that the robo phone calls coming are also from Verizon numbers.  I visited Verizon's complaint site and report the numbers, but it doesn't seem to help.  I come on the forums, and I see customers are saying what I am saying, but Verizon reps are either completely ignoring the strange pattern, or somehow turning the blame on customers for giving out their phone numbers to people.  Something just doesn't add up -  I am stressed out of my mind seeing these calls come so often and interrupt my life, at work, school, whether I am conducting business or taking personal calls, this pattern is quite disturbing.  If Verizon could just acknowledge the issue, at the very least, and let me know this is an ongoing widespread issue, I would feel a little better, I wouldn't feel so personally "targeted".  I may not want to immediately jump ship or consider another carrier, honestly and transparency goes a long way.

However, it's the intentional manipulation of these threads, of withholding information, of trying to spin a narrative and blame me, my elderly parents, my siblings, my friends, as if we did something, as if it wasn't the Verizon prepaid program that caused this - it's this unethical attitude and behavior that is now pushing me to switch carriers. 

Final Thoughts: I hope my breakdown helps others dealing with this torture.  I hope Verizon takes note - you're better than this. At least you should be.   God bless.

DukeHazzard​ dwt12777​ jav6​ jaysteag​ Icetub​ rupunzlkim​ MiltonHotard​

[deloused]

[removed]

1: Verizon has publicly acknowledged the caller ID spoofing issue the OP is experiencing-

Caller ID Spoofing | Verizon Wireless

2: The issue has nothing at all to do with prepaid services. The ‘criminals’ don’t sign up or pay for any Verizon services. All that’s needed is caller-ID spoofing software and an internet connection.

3: The ‘criminals’ use the active phone numbers of other legitimate parties to help hide their identity and trick people into answering so reporting the number displayed on the caller ID wouldn’t help, and in some cases could cause more issues since the actual owner of the number isn’t making the calls. For example- I’ve used the ‘Caller-ID faker’ app thru my WiFi connection at work to call my co-worker’s Verizon phone from our boss’s phone number to scare her as a joke. Verizon can’t stop me from doing that, as I wasn’t using their service to do that, my co-worker wouldn’t want to block the boss’s number of course, and Verizon wouldn’t want to block his number either as it wasn’t him doing the spoofing, I just chose his number to have the program display as the caller ID for the call.

A lot of scammers have chosen to use other legitimate numbers to display as the caller-ID such as local police departments, hospitals, and businesses. Blocking some numbers in those cases could be a safety issue, just like it would be if all robo calls were blocked as there are legitimate and important uses of robocalls, used by first responders for reverse 911, schools to alert guardians of issues/updates, and for businesses and employers that do have a legitimate reason to notify someone or a large group of people of important details using that method.

4: The ‘criminals’ just like Verizon are indeed out to make as much money as possible, so they wouldn’t be signing up for any services (prepaid or otherwise) as there is no need to do so. The criminals have no need to know who the service provider is of the person they’re calling to perform most scams. The criminals also would have no way of knowing if the numbers they’re calling are Verizon customers or anyone else’s. That’s why the spoofing issue affects every carrier.  While auto dialer programs are set to repeatedly dial out to all numbers sequentially within an area code/exchange to determine if the number is active or not, it in no way indicates the service provider of the party they’re calling. Carriers do own set ranges of Area code/exchanges, but in many cases it’s a portion and not the entire range. For example- Verizon could own the first half of an exchange like (415)555-0000 thru 4999, while AT&T could own (415)555-5000 thru (415)555-5000 thru 9999. Even within those originally set exchange ranges the actual carrier of the customer being called would still be unknown to the scammer, as a lot of people change providers and keep their old number. So 555-1212 could now be Verizon customer, while 555-1213 could now be a T-mobile customer etc. The only way the criminal could find out who the carrier is that’s providing service to the number they’re calling would be if the person who answered told them.

5: These scammers aren’t selling these active number lists to other criminals, as there isn’t any market for that. With an auto dialer program connected to the internet it would compile the list of numbers that are active numbers for the criminal enterprise automatically and at no additional cost. They wouldn’t pay another criminal for a list of numbers that they could get for free.

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[honestcustomer]

Your reply has nothing to do with this issue as it is unique and different from the one you are referring to.  [removed]

i actually don‘t disagree with your statements regarding the Caller ID spoofing, it’s just that this is a different, unique, separate issue and it needs its own discussion. So the rest of your post is not relevant to this issue.

What I am referring to is a systemic issue, where myself and friends and family have literally looked up and traced dozens of phone numbers which were all verified as Verizon wireless cellular phone numbers that were not attempting to spoof or pretend to be someone - they were Verizon numbers with the same prefix as our numbers.

And your attempt to mislead folks with general statements about “auto dialers connecting to the internet” is your own guess and opinion - there are many nefarious reasons that a criminal might want to still dial numbers other than confirming if it works.  You’re really going out of your way to steer the discussion here, almost concerns as to your intention? Are you a customer? Or Verizon employee or affiliate? No need to get so emotional and try to be so intentionally vague and misleading - this is the behavior that frustrates customers the most.

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[nordicblue]

Love the Verizon answer "Don't give your number to unwanted companies" LMAOO!!!!!! Like that's how they're calling me. They looked me up from the vehicle database and started calling for car warranty EVERY fudging DAY from another number in my exchange. For the love of God, Verizon, start blocking numbers that do not originate from anywhere. It's an easy check for you in this technology driven world we live in. 

Also, you really think these persons care two cr*ps about the do not call registry? Another huge LOL!!!

This is on you, Verizon, fix the issue! AT&T provides better filtering tools than you do.