Reverce phone number lookup

Liberty
1

Make a free way to identify persons that call your phone number. This would prevent
Some spam calls.

2 Likes
2

Good idea, but technology is against you. With land lines you could type *69 and it would tell you the number that called you. Today you get the number for free, but it can be inaccurate. Dialing *68 will disable the Caller ID for the next outbound / external call only. It is probably pretty easy to have software dial that before the phone number to block their ID. “What does * 87 do on your phone? — The Daily VPN”

  1. There is a federal law preventing phone “spoofing”, or using invalid ID information. “Caller ID Spoofing | Federal Communications Commission” and “Federal Register :: Truth in Caller ID Rules”. It does not seem to stop Spammers or Robocalls, especially if they are calling from a foreign country.
  2. Interesting article about the hazards of phone “spoofing”. Check out the “using caller ID spoofing to facilitate SIM swapping fraud” info. Scary.
  3. There are free phone apps you can download that let you use a different phone number, not associated with you, that allows you to call or text someone. A Google or Duck Duck Go search shows many of them.
  4. I have been on the Federal and State No Call Lists for years but I still get them.

I wish you luck.

2 Likes
3

Caller ID lookups exist (I use one for my day job frequently) - search Caller ID Test (you have to provide an e-mail address and you can make up to 5 queries a day). But I will tell you it is of little use.

Most of the phone numbers the spammers use are not used by anybody and are being used at random (so for example all the calls I get on my cell phone are from the same area code as my cell phone - even though they are calling from elsewhere).

There is a mandate to implement STIR/SHAKEN, a protocol that verifies the authenticity of the calling party, and reject or flag calls that don’t meet the criteria. While the major telephone companies have implemented it, there are some that are doing actions to help spammers get around it (at the risk of being forced out of business) - The FCC is cracking down on those who are not in compliance, and several hundred telephone companies have already been disconnected from the US network (along with millions of dollars in penalties), so we are winning the war, but we can’t declare victory yet. There are also additional enforcement rules coming in the next 24 months that will further close those workarounds.

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