Landline appears to be calling itself

[#1]

Within the past three days, display screen on landline phones has registered five calls from our own number, including name.  This happened a couple of times in the past, when there were landline service issues requiring a service visit from a Fios tech, who said that his own home phone had been receiving similar "self-calls".  There are no service issues this time.  Is this sophisticated spoofing?  Is Verizon working on landline system?  What gives?

[Hankster3]

This has also happened to me at our home phone more than once.  I've resisted the urge to answer call thinking that the caller/hacker would cause nefarious outcome.  I tried to contact Verizon support to discuss but got caught in endless loop of menus & recorded tips regarding Caller ID ... I couldn't contact a human.

[#3]

Hankster, Thank you for the tip about your difficulties trying to reach Verizon support. I’ve also resisted answering these self-calls. The Verizon Fios tech I mentioned in the original post had no explanation to offer. A VZ service truck was parked across the street earlier today, no driver in it at the time… the truck had gone when I looked again… maybe there’s some maintenance work going on. I haven’t posted in this community before, but I assume there’s a Verizon human or two checking these posts. Hey, VZ, anyone out there with an explanation?

[jonjones1 · Accepted solution]

https://www.verizon.com/support/residential/homephone/calling-features/stop-unwanted-calls

These are scammer calls and is known as spoofing. These ingrates can make it look like your calling yourself, or another number calling you to scam you.

its not just you and the other poster.

[#5]

Thank you for the post, jonjones. I’m marking it as accepted, but it doesn’t really seem like there is any solution. If, for example, Nomorobo identifies known robocallers, it’s not going to identify someone’s own number as a robocaller. And you can’t very well visit the spamalerts site and report your own number. It seems like the kind of thing that happens when an email account is hacked, and contacts start getting spam and phishing messages that appear to be from the hacked account. So it goes. In any case, the “self-calls” have stopped, at least for now.

[jonjones1]

Its a purplexing situation that behind the spoofed self receive number (your own) the phone company actually knows who these scammers are. However the FCC and local states authorities have given verizon and others (both cellular and home phone service) until 2020 to stop these scammers and so far AT&T and Verizon have implemented SPAM: programs that identify the calls as such. It is just one way in a long list of tools that are being tried. As you know it wont fix the situation overnight but it is a start.

there has been articles on the net stating most carriers today can detect spoofed callers and the new technology will actually verify a number as being that number and will handle it on the phone companies end. It will take time.

thanks for the kind kudo...

[Seeker1437]

For toll fre numbers there exists a system that will always identify the proper number, eve with caller ID blocked. It's called Automatic Number Identification (ANI). I believe a similar system is used for emergancy services too.

But it's designed for toll free calls since each called receive on a toll free number is billed to the subscriber of the toll free number instead of the calling party and the billing is based off the area for some services.

I hope that a modernized version of this can be used to that the antiquated caller id system is made obselete.

[jonjones1]

You have to remember that the spoofing also shows up as toll free numbers.

in my own experience i have seen the toll free be it 800 or 888 or 877 appear but is not to whom the number belongs.

as the fcc has stated phone companies have had the means to identify these types of calls but have not. The companies sell line number service to these scammers, and call blocking services to their customers. Its all about the money.

now with huge fines and other measures going to be accessed against the phone company “now they are fixing the situation” they have until 2020 to take positive action.

[Seeker1437]

Right they can, and sometimes do when you are called.

But that is not what I am talking about.

It is not possible to spoof or even block your number from being detected when calling a toll free number or emergency services. This is because of ANI Automatic Number Identification.

Should a system exist for all numbers and not just emergency services or toll free numbers, it would not be possible to spoof caller id, or may become exceptionally more difficult.

[jonjones1]

You are absolutely correct, in calling a toll free number your number is shown to them.

i was just expanding on how them scum bag spoof callers even use toll free as being shown. Its just a pity the state of technology can circumvent a phone company’s system.