By that I mean my phone number is appearing as a caller ID on other phones. I think this is referred to as 'caller ID spoofing', where a caller purposely displays incorrect caller ID information.

Suddenly, three times today I received a call from strangers asking why I had called them and what was it that I wanted. I said I didn't call them, but they said their caller ID showed my number. One person even texted me a caller ID screen shot from his smart phone, and it certainly did show my phone number.

Has anyone else experienced this type of spoofing; if so, what did you do about it? All AT&T suggests is to change my phone number, which I really don't want to do. Besides, these calls are not actually being made from my phone, according to my usage logs. It's just a case of where my phone number is incorrectly appearing on someone's Caller ID screen....thus the spoofing.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

Sorry BB but I can offer nothing on this. As you know I don't even carry a cell phone.

Still I DO have one thought but doubt that it is workable. Remember that your phone can be located via GPS. I doubt that it can be done but check with your provider to see if calls can be blocked if the call originates from a different GPS location than where the phone happens to be.

The sad thing in such a case is that it is just too easy to spoof stuff. Even on a web site things can be spoofed. We recommend to enable the status bar in a web browser so that you can hover over a link to see where it actually goes. While still a good idea it is not totally effective. In 2 minutes I could embed code in the link to make the status bar say anything I want.

Sorry that I can't be of any real help.

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Thanks for responding, Jay. I will investigate the GPS location solution, but I'm not sure how that would work as I move around with the phone such that the GS location keeps changing. And as I understand it, a land line phone can also be spoofed.

I know you recommend enabling the status bar in the browser, but I guess I don't understand how that is suppose to work and what it is that I am suppose to see. When in IE 11, if I go up to the tool bar area, right click, and then select the status bar......all I see is a gray horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen. And all it shows is my view zoom level (e.g., 159%). What am I missing here?

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about this other than change your number or ignore the situation. The problem is squarely owned by the telecoms who are doing nothing to stop it. Caller ID is absolutely useless these days as it can be spoofed easily and is spoofed regularly. The callers doing this are using Voice Over IP, not cellular, so it is outside of AT&T's network.
-steve

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

On the status bar... If you hover over a link the status bar will show the actual address that the link goes regardless of what the link says. Still, as I said, this can be easily beaten.

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I'm going to ignore the situation for now. My AT&T usage logs don't show my phone actually being used to make these calls, so the perpetrators are simply spoofing caller ID to make it look like my phone. Yesterday I also received 6 calls from a number in WI. I finally called the number to see what was going on, and my call was answered by a little old lady (honest). That was her number, but she had no idea what was going on. We had a nice chat and I made a new friend in WI.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

True. GG and I have been spoofed at least once. Just ignore it. In our case we never answer the phone anyway, let the answering machine take it. If we do not recognize the caller then we do not have to answer to the complaint "why did you call?"

One time we even called ourselves, that's right, the phone gave us the number of the person calling, and it was US! We knew NOT to answer the phone, I wouldn't want to talk to myself anyway, I already do that enough when I'm not on the phone.
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson