phone number highjacked

[Mayhem13]

I received an angry call today from a guy who was mad my number kept calling him about low interest credit cards. I called no one. So i can only think the number was highjacked. Does anyone know how i can stop this or prevent it?

[vzw_customer_support]

Mayhem13, this is very strange and we certainly want to get to the bottom of this situation. Is this the only call you have received about this matter?

GersonG_VZW
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[lizziebdl3]

My daughter and I have been receiving calls from numbers that are similar to our numbers. I answered one call and it was an advertisement for a security alarm system. How can you tell if your number was highjacked? Or was Verizon hacked and your not telling your customers?

[Weth · Accepted solution]

What is happening is the low life cold sales callers are using a technique called spoofing. What they do is start calling random numbers and the spoof the number they are calling from to appear to be a number close to yours. They do this because it is more likely you will answer an unknown number if it is close to yours. They will answer with hello to a common name. If that is your name, you are more likely to talk. And since it is a common name, you are more likely to know someone by that name and think it was for them, so you talk to the low life sales person. It is all to get you to answer and then to start talking to them.

You owe them no courtesy, as soon as you realize what is going on, hang up.

[SuzyQ]

This seems to be happening more frequently, lately.  I've had the same thing happen to me - calls from the same area code and prefix as my cell number ... but they don't leave a VM if I don't answer, and when I do it's a sales pitch por something ... not anyone I need to talk to.

See I keep getting phone calls, from numbers in the Verizon pool  for more of the same....

[lizziebdl3]

Thanks! That info helps.

[lizziebdl3]

Same thing happens to me SuzyQ